TWO SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE KING CHARLES, Upon the xxvi verse of the first Chapter of GENESIS.  
Bianca Dr. DONNE DEAN OF PAUL'S.  
¶ Printed by the Printers to the University of CAMBRIDGE. MDCXXXIIII.   
Genesis 1.26. 
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.  
NEver such a frame so soon set up, as this in this chapter: For, for the thing itself, there is no other thing to compare it with; for it is all, it is the whole world. And for the time, there was no other time to compare it with; for this was the beginning of time, In the beginning God created heaven and earth. That earth, which in some thousands of year's men could not look over, nor discern what form it had (for neither Lactantius, almost three hundred years after Christ; nor S. Augustine, more than a hundred years after him, would believe the earth to be round) That earth, which no man in his person is ever said to have compassed till our age: That earth, which is too much for man yet (for as yet a very great part of the earth is unpeopled) That earth, which, if we will cast it all but into a Map, costs many month's labour to grave it; nay, if we will but cast a piece of an acre of it into a garden, costs many years labour to fashion and furnish it; all that earth: And then that heaven, which spreads so fare, as that subtle men have, with some appearance of probability, imagined, that in that heaven, in those manifold Spheres of the Planets and the Stars, there are many earths, many worlds, as big as this which we inhabit: That earth and that heaven, which spent God himself, Almighty God, six days in finishing, Moses sets up in a few syllables, in one line, In principio, In the beginning God created heaven and earth. If a Livy or a Guicciardine, or such extensive and voluminous authors had had this story in hand, God must have made another world, to have made them a library to hold their books, of the making of this world. Into what wire would they have drawn out this earth! Into what leaf-gold would they have beat out these heavens! It may assist our conjecture herein, to consider, that amongst those men, who proceed with a sober modesty and limitation in their writing, & make a conscience not to clog the world with unnecessary books; yet the volumes which are written by them, upon the beginning of Genesis, are scarce less than infinite. God did no more but say, Let this & this be done; and Moses doth no more but say, that upon Gods saying it was done. God required not Nature to help him to do it; Moses required not Reason to help him to believe: The holy Ghost hovered upon the waters, and so God wrought; The holy Ghost hovered upon Moses too, and so he wrote: And we believe these things to be so, by the same Spirit in the mouth of Moses, by which they were made so in God's hand: Only (Beloved) remember, that a frame may be thrown down in much less time than it was set up. A child, an ape can give fire to a cannon; and a vapour can shake the earth: and when Christ said, Throw down this Temple, and in three days I will raise it, they never stood upon the consideration of throwing it down; they knew that might be soon done: but they wondered at the speedy raising of it. Now, if all this earth were made in that minute, may not all come to the general dissolution in this minute? Or may not thy acres, thy miles, thy shires shrink into feet, and so few feet, as shall but make up thy grave? when he who was a great lord must be but a cottager, & not so well; for a cottager must have so many acres to his cottage: but in this case, a little piece of an acre, five foot, is become the house itself, the house and the land; the grave is all: lower then that, the grave is the land, and the tenement, & the tenant too. He that lies in it, becomes the same earth that he lies in; they all make but one earth, and but a little of it. But then raise thyself to a higher hope again: God hath made better land, the land of promise; a stronger city, the new Jerusalem; & inhabitants for that everlasting city, us, whom he made, not by saying, Let there be men; but by consultation, by deliberation; God said, Let us make man, etc.  
We shall pursue our great examples, 
Divisio.  God in doing, Moses in saying, and so make haste in applying the parts. But first receive them: and since we have the whole world in contemplation, consider in these words, the four quarters of the world, by application, by fair and just accommodations of the words. First, in the first word that God speaks here, Faciamus, Let Us, in the plural, (a denotation of diverse persons in the Godhead) we consider our East, where we must begin, at the knowledge and confession of the Trinity: for though in the way to heaven we have traveled beyond the Gentiles, when we come to confess but one God (the Gentiles could not do that) yet we are still among the Jews, if we think that one God to be but one person. 
Zech. 6.12.  Christ's name is Oriens, the East; if we will be named by him, (called Christians) we must look to this East, the confession of the Trinity: there is then our East in the Faciamus, Let Us, Us make man: And then our West is in the next word, Faciamus hominem: Though we be thus made; made by the council, made by the concurrence, made by the hand of the whole Trinity: yet we are made but men; and man but in the appellation in this Text; and man there is but Adam; and Adam is but earth, but red earth, died red in blood, in blood, in soul, the blood of our own souls. To that West we must all come, to the earth; The sun knoweth his going down: 
Psal. 104.19.  even the sun, for all his glory and height, hath a going down, and he knows it. The highest cannot divest mortality, nor the discomfort of mortality. 
Luc. 12.54.  When you see a cloud rise out of the west, straightway you say, There cometh a storm, says Christ: When out of the region of your West, (that is, your latter days) there comes a cloud, a sickness; you feel a storm: even the best moral constancy is shaken. But this cloud, and this storm, and this West there must be; and that is our second consideration. But then the next word designs a North, a strong and powerful North, to scatter and dissipate these clouds: Ad imaginem & similitudinem; that we are made according to a pattern, to an image, to a likeness, which God proposed to himself for the making of man. This consideration, that God did not rest in that preexistent matter, out of which he made all other creatures, and produced their forms out of their matter, for the making of man; but took a form, a pattern, a model for that work: This is the Northwind that is called upon to carry out the perfumes of the garden, 
Cant. 4.16.  to spread the goodness of God abroad: this is that which is intended in Job; 
Job. 37.22.  Fair weather cometh out of the North. Our West, our declination is in this, that we are but earth; our North, our dissipation of that darkness is in this, that we are not all earth: though we be of that matter, we have on another form, another image, another likeness. And then whose image and likeness it is, is our Meridional height, our Noon, our South-point, our highest elevation; In imagine nostra, Let us make man in our image. Though our sun set at noon, 
Amos 8.9.  as the prophet Amos speaks; though we die in our youth, or fall in our height; yet even in that sunset we shall have a noon: for this image of God shall never departed from our soul, no not when that soul departs from our body: And that is our South, our Meridional height and glory. And when we have thus seen this East, in the Faciamus; that I am the workmanship and care of the whole Trinity; and this West; in the Hominem; that for all this, my matter, my substance is but earth; But then a North, a power of overcoming that law and miserable state, In imagine, that though in my matter the earth, I must die; yet in my form, in that image which I am made by, I cannot die: And after all, a South, a knowledge that this image is not the image of angels themselves, to whom we shall be like; but it is by the same life by which those angels themselves were made, the image of God himself: when I have gone over this East, and West, and North, & South here in this world, I should be sorry, as Alexander was, if there were no more worlds. But there is another world, which these considerations will discover and lead us to, in which our joy and our glory shall be to see that God essentially, and face to face, after whose image and likeness we were made before. But as that Pilot, which hath harboured his ship so fare within land, as that he must have change of winds, in all the points of the compass, to bring her out, cannot hope to bring her out in one day: so being to transport you by occasion of these words, from this world to the next, and in this world, through all the compass, all the four quarters thereof; I cannot hope to make all this voyage to day. To day we shall consider our longitude, our East and West; and our North and South at another tide and another gale.  
First then we look towards our East, 
I. Part. Oriens.  the fountain of light and life; There this world began: The creation was in the East, and there our next world began too: there the gates of heaven opened to us, and opened to us in the gates of death: for our heaven is the death of our Saviour, and there he lived, and died there, and there he looked into our West, from the East, from his terrace, from his pinnacle, from his exaltation (as himself calls it) the Cross. The light which arises to us in this East, the knowledge which we receive in this first word of our text, Faciamus, Let us (where God, speaking of himself, speaks in the plural) is the manifestation of the Trinity; The Trinity, which is the first letter in his Alphabet, that ever thinks to read his name in the Book of life; the first note in his Gammut, that ever thinks to sing his part in the Triumphant Church. Let him have done as much as all the worthies, and suffer as much as all nature's martyrs, the penurious Philosophers; let him have known as much as they pretend to know, Omne scibile, all that can be known; nay, and In-intelligibilia, In-investigabilia (as Tertullian speaks) un-understandable things, unrevealed decrees of God: let him have writ as much as Aristotle writ, or as is written upon Aristotle (which is multiplication enough) yet he hath not learned to spell, that hath not learned the Trinity: he hath not learned to pronounce the first word, that cannot bring three persons into one God. The subject of natural Philosophers, are the four elements, which God made: the subject of supernatural Philosophy, Divinity, are the three elements which God is; and (if we may so speak) which make God, that is, constitute God, notify God to us, Father, Son, and holy Ghost. The natural man, that hearkens to his own heart, and the law written there, may produce actions that are good; good in the nature, and matter, and substance of the work: he may relieve the poor, he may defend the oppressed; but yet he is but as an open field: and though he be not absolutely barren, he bears but grass. The godly man, he that hath taken in the knowledge of a great and powerful God, and enclosed and hedged in himself with the fear of God, may produce actions better than the mere nature of man, because he refers his actions to the glory of an imagined God: but yet this man, though he be more fruitful than the former, more than a grassy field, is but a ploughed field, and bears but corn, and corn (God knows) choked with weeds. But the man that hath taken hold of God, by those handles, by which God hath delivered and manifested himself, in the notions of Father, Son, and holy Ghost; he is no field, but a garden, a garden of Gods planting, paradise, in which grow all things good to eat, and good to see (spiritual refection, and spiritual recreation too) and all things good to cure: he hath his being, and his diet, and his physic there, in the knowledge of the Trinity: his being, in the mercy of the Father; his physic, in the merits of his Son; his diet, his daily bread, in the daily visitations of the holy Ghost. God is not pleased, not satisfied with our bare knowledge that there is a God; for, it is impossible to please God without faith: 
Hebr. 11.6.  and there is no such exercise of faith in the knowledge of a God, but that reason and nature will bring a man to it. When we profess God in the Creed, by way of belief, Credo in Deum, I believe in God; in the same article we profess him to be a Father too; I believe in God the Father Almighty: and that notion, the Father, necessarily implies a second person, a Son. And then we profess him to be maker of heaven and earth: and in the creation the holy Ghost, the Spirit of God, is expressly named: so that we do but exercise reason and nature in directing ourselves upon God: we exercise not Faith (and without faith it is impossible to please God) till we come to that which is above nature, till we apprehend a Trinity: we know God, we believe in the Trinity. The Gentiles multiplied gods; there were almost as many gods as men that believed in them; and I am got out of that throng, and out of that noise, when I am come into the knowledge of one God: but I am got above stairs, got into the bedchamber, when I am come to see the Trinity, and to apprehend not only, that I am in the care of a great & powerful God, but that there is a Father that made me, a Son that redeemed me, a holy Ghost that applies this good purpose of the Father and Son upon me, to me. The root of all is God. But it is not the way to receive fruits, to dig to the root, but to reach to the boughs. I reach for my creation, to the Father; for my redemption, to the Son; for my sanctification, to the holy Ghost: and so I make the knowledge of God a tree of life unto me, and not otherwise. Truly it is a sad contemplation to see Christians scratch, and wound, and tear one another with the ignominious invectives and uncharitable names of Heretic and Schismatic, about ceremonial and problematical, and indeed but critical verbal controversies; and in the mean time, the foundation of all, the Trinity, undermined by those numerous, those multitudinous ant-hills of Socinians, that overflow some parts of the Christian world, and multiply every where. And therefore the adversaries of the Reformation were wise in their generation, when, to supplant the credit of both those great assistants of the Reformation, Luther & Calvin, they impute to Calvin fundamental error in the divinity of the second person of the Trinity, the Son; And they impute to Luther a detestation of the word Trinity, and an expunction thereof, in all places of the Liturgy, where the Church had received that word: They knew well, if that slander could prevail against those persons, nothing that they could say, could prevail upon any good Christians. But though in our Doctrine we keep up the Trinity aright; yet God knows, in our Practice we do not: I hope it cannot be said of any of us, that he believes not the Trinity: but who amongst us thinks of the Trinity, considers of the Trinity? Father and Son do naturally imply and induce one another, & therefore they fall oftener into our consideration; but for the holy Ghost, who feels him, when he feels him? who takes knowledge of his working, when he works? Indeed our Fathers provided not well enough for the worship of the whole Trinity, nor of the holy Ghost in particular, in the endowments of the Church, and consecrations of the Churches, and possessions in their names: what a spiritual dominion in the Prayers & worship of the people, what a temporal dominion in the possessions of the world, had the Virgin Marie, Queen of heaven, and Queen of earth too! She was made joynt-purchaser of the Church with the Son, and had as much of the worship thereof as he, though she paid her Fine in milk, and he in blood: And, till a new sect came in her Son's name, and in his name, the name of Jesus, took the Regency so fare out of that Queen-mothers' hands, and sued out her son's livery so fare, as that, though her name be used, the Virgin Marie is but a Feofee in trust for them; all was hers. And if God oppose not these new usurpers of the world, posterity will soon see S. Ignatius worth all the Trinity in possessions and endowments; and that sumptuous and splendid foundation of his first Temple at Rome, may well create a conjecture and suspicion. Travel no farther; Survey but this City, and, of their not one hundred Churches, the Virgin Marie hath a dozen: The Trinity hath but one; Christ hath but one; the holy Ghost hath none. But not to go into the City, nor out of ourselves, which of us doth truly & considerately ascribe the comforts that he receives in dangers or in distresses, to that God of all comfort, the Comforter, the holy Ghost? We know who procured us our presentation, and our dispensation: you know who procured you your offices, and your honours: Shall I ever forget who gave me my comfort in sickness? who gave me my comfort in the troubles, and perplexities, and diffidencies of my conscience? The holy Ghost, the holy Ghost brought you hither; The holy Ghost opens your ears and your hearts here. Till in all your distresses you say, Veni Creator Spiritus, Come holy Ghost; and that you feel a comfort in his coming: you can never say, Veni Domine Jesus, Come Lord Jesus, come to judgement. Never to consider the day of judgement, is a fearful thing; but to consider the day of judgement without the holy Ghost, is a thousand times more fearful.  
This seal then, this impression, this notion of the Trinity, being set upon us in this first plural word of our Text, Faciamus, Let us (for Father, Son, and holy Ghost made man) and this seal being reimprinted upon us in our second Creation, or Regeneration, in Baptism, (man is baptised in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Ghost) this notion of the Trinity, being our distinctive character from Jew and Gentile; this being our specifical form; why doth not this our form, this soul of our Religion denominate us? why are we not called Trinitarians, a name that would embrace the profession of all the persons; but only Christians, which limits and determines us upon one? The first Christians, amongst whose manifold persecutions, scorn and contempt was not the least, in contempt and scorn were called Nazaraei, Nazarites, in the mouth of the vulgar; and Galilaei, Galileans, in the mouth of Julian; & Judaei, Jews, in the mouth of Nero, when he imputed the burning of Rome (his own art) to them; and Christiani, Christians, so that (as Tertullian says) they could accuse Christians of nothing, but the name of Christians: and yet they could not call them by their right name of Christians, which was gentle, quiet, easy, patiented men, made to be trodden upon; but they gave them diverse names in scorn, yet never called them Trinitarians. Christians themselves amongst themselves were called by diverse names in the Primitive Church, for distinction; Fideles, the Faithful; and Fratres, the Brethren; and Discipuli, Disciples; & after, by common custom at Antioch, Christians: and after that (they say, by a council which the Apostles held at the same City, at Antioch) there passed an express Canon of the Church, that they should be called so, Christians: And before they had this name at Antioch, first by common usage, after by a determinate Canon, to be called Christians, from Christ; at Alexandria, they were called (most likely from the name of Jesus) Jesseans. And so Philo Judaeus, in that book which he writes the Jessaeis, intends by his Jesseans, Christians. And in diverse parts of the world, into which Christians travel now, they find some elements, some fragments, some relics of the Christian religion, in the practice of some religious men, whom those Countries call Jesseans, doubtlessly derived and continued from the name of Jesus. So that the Christians took many names to themselves for distinction (Brethren, Disciples, Faithful) and they had many names put upon them in scorn (Nazarites, Galileans, Jews, Christians) & yet they were never by custom amongst themselves, never by commandment from the Church, never in contempt from others, called Trinitarians, the profession of the Trinity being their specific form, and distinctive character. Why so? Beloved, the name of Christ involved all: not only because it is a name that hath a dignity in it, more than the rest (for Christ is an anointed person, a King, a Messiah; and so the profession of that name confers an unction, a regal and a holy unction upon us, for we are thereby a royal priesthood) but because in the profession of Christ, the whole Trinity is professed. How often doth the Son say that the Father sent him! And how often that the Father will, and that he will send the holy Ghost! 
John 17.3.  This is life eternal (says he) to know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent; and sent with all power in heaven and in earth. This must be professed, Father and Son; and then no man can profess this, no man can call Jesus the Lord, but by the holy Ghost: So that as in the persecutions in the Primitive Church, the Martyrs which were hurried to tumultuary executions, and could not be heard for noise, in excusing themselves of treason, and sedition, & crimes imputed to them, to make their cause odious, did use in the sight of the people (who might see a gesture, though they could not hear a protestation) to sign themselves with the sign of the Cross, to let them know for what profession they died; so that the sign of the Cross, in that use thereof, in that time, was an Abridgement and a Catechism of the whole Christian religion: So is the professing of the name of Christ, the professing of the whole Trinity. As he that confesseth one God, is got beyond the mere natural man; And he that confesseth a Son of God, beyond him: so is neither got to the full truth, till he confess the holy Ghost too. The fool says in his heart, There is no God: The fool, says David; the emphatical fool, in the highest degree of folly: But though he get beyond that folly, he is a fool still, if he say, There is no Christ; for Christ is the wisdom of the Father: And a fool still, if he deny the holy Ghost. Etiam Christiani nomen superficies est, is excellently said by Tertullian; The name and profession of a Christian, is but a superficial outside, sprinkled upon my face in Baptism, or upon my outward profession in actions, if I have not in my heart a sense of the holy Ghost, that applies the mercies of the Father, and the merits of the Son to my soul. As S. Paul said, Whilst you are without Christ, you are without God; It is an Atheism (with S. Paul) to be no Christian: So whilst you are without the holy Ghost, you are without Christ. It is Antichristian to deny, or not to confess the holy Ghost. For as Christ is the manifestation of the Father, so the holy Ghost is the application of the Son. Therein are we Christians, that in the profession of that name of Christ, we profess all the three Persons: In Christ is the whole Trinity; because, as the Father sent him, so sent he the holy Ghost: And that is our specific form; that is our distinctive character from Jew & Gentile, the Trinity.  
But than is this specific form, this distinctive character, the notion of the Trinity, conveyed to us, exhibited, imprinted upon us in our creation in this word, this plural word, in the mouth of our own God, Faciamus, Let Us, Us. It is here, and here first. This is an intimation, and the first intimation of the Trinity from the mouth of God, in all the Bible. It is true, that though the same faith, which is necessary to salvation now, were always necessary, and so in the old Testament they were bound to believe in Christ, as well as in the new, and consequently in the whole Trinity; yet not so explicitly, nor so particularly as now: now Christ, calling upon God, in the name of the Father, says, I have manifested thy Name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world. 
John 17.6.  They were men appropriated to God, men exempt out of the world: yet they had not a clear manifestation of Father and Son, the doctrine of the Trinity, till Christ manifested it to them. I have manifested thy Name, thy name of Father and Son. And therefore the Jewish Rabbins say, that the Septuagint, the first Translatours of the Bible, did disguise some places of the Scriptures, in their translation, lest Ptolomey (for whom they translated it) should be scandalised with those places: And that this text was one of those places, which, (say they) though it be otherwise in the copies of the Scriptures which we have now, they translated Faciam, and not Faciamus: that God said here, I will make, in the singular, and not, Let us make man, in the plural; lest that plural word might have misled King Ptolomey to think that the Jews had a plural religion, and worshipped diverse gods. So good an evidence do they confess this text to be, for some kind of plurality in the Godhead.  
Here then God notified the Trinity; and here first. For though we accept an intimation of the Trinity, in the first line of the Bible, where Moses joined a plural name, Elohim, with a singular verb, Bara; and so in construction it is Creavit Dii, God's created heaven and earth: yet besides that, that is rather a mysterious collection, than an evident conclusion of a plurality of persons: though we read that in that first verse, before this in the 26; yet Moses writ that, which is in the beginning of this chapter, more than 2000 years after God spoke this that is in our text: so long was Gods plural before Moses his plural; Gods Faciamus before Moses Bara Elohim. So that in this text gins our Catechism: here we have (and here first) the saving knowledge of the Trinity. For, when God spoke here, to whom could God speak, but to God? Non cum rebus creandis, non cum re nihili, says Athanasius, speaking of God's first speaking, when he said of the first creature, Let there be light. God spoke not then to future things, that were not. When God spoke first, there was no creature at all to speak to: when God spoke of the making of man, there were no creatures. But were there any creatures able to create, or able to assist him in the creation of man? who? Angels? some had thought so in S. Basils' time; and to them S. Basil says, Súntne illi? God says, Let us make man to our image; and could he say so to Angels? Are Angels and God all one? or is that that is like an Angel, therefore like God? It was sua ratio, suum verbum, sua sapientia, says that Father: God spoke to his own word and wisdom; to his own purpose and goodness: And the Son is the word and wisdom of God; and the holy Ghost is the goodness and the purpose of God, that is, the administration, the dispensation of his Church. It is true, that when God speaks this over again, in the Church (as he doth every day, now this minute) than God speaks to his Angels, to the Angels of the Church, to his Ministers: he says, Faciamus, Let Us, Us both together, you and we, make a man: join mine ordinance (your preaching) with my Spirit (says God to us) and so make man: Preach the oppressor, and preach the wanton, and preach the calumniatour, into an other nature; make that ravening wolf, a man; that licentious goat, a man; that insinuating serpent, a man by thy preaching. To day if you will hear his voice, hear us; for here he calls upon us to join with him for the making of man. But for his first Faciamus, which is in our text, it is excellently said, Dictum in senatu, 
Rupertus.  & soliloquio: It was spoken in a senate, and yet in solitariness; spoken in private, and yet publicly spoken; spoken where there were diverse, and yet but one, one God, and three persons.  
If there were no more intended in this plural expression, Us, but (as some have conceived) that God spoke here in the person of a Prince and Sovereign Lord; and therefore spoke, as Princes do, in the plural, We command, and we forbidden: yet S. Gregory's caution would justly fall upon it, Reverenter pensandum est, It requires reverend consideration, if it be but so: for God speaks so, like a King, in the plural, but seldom, but five times (in my account) in all the scriptures; and in all five, in cases of important consequence. In this text first, where God creates man, whom he constitutes his viceroy in the world; here he speaks in his Royal plural: And then in the next Chapter, where he exempts man's term in this vice-regencie to the end of the world, in propounding man means of succession; Faciamus, Let us make him a helper: there he speaks in his Royal plural. And also in the third Chapter, in declaring the heinousness of man's fault, & arraigning him, and all us in him, God says, Sicut unus ex nobis, Man is become as one of us, not content to be our viceroy, but ourselves: there is his Royal plural too: And again, in that declaration of his justice, in that confusion of the builders of Babylon, Descendamus, Confundamus, Let us do it. And then lastly, in that great work of mingling mercy with justice, which (if we may so speak) is God's masterpiece, when he says, Quis ex nobis? Who will go for us, and publish this? In these places, & these only (and not all these neither, if we take it exactly according to the original; for in the second, the making of Eve, though the vulgar have it in the plural, it is indeed but singular in the Hebrew) God speaks as a King, in his Royal plural still. And when it is but so, Reverenter pensandum est, says that Father, It behoves us to hearken reverently to him, for kings are images of God; such images of God, as have ears, and can hear; and hands, and can strike. But I would ask no more premeditation at your hands, when you come to speak to God in this place, then if you sued to speak with the King: to speak with no more fear of God here, then if you went to the King under the conscience of a guiltiness towards him, and a knowledge that he knew it. And that is your case here; sinners, and even manifest sinners: for even midnight is noon in the sight of God; and when your candles are put out, his sun shines still. Nec quid absconditum à calore ejus (says David) There is nothing hid from the heat thereof: 
Psal. 19.6.  not only no sin hid from the light thereof, from the sight of God; but not from the heat thereof, not from the wrath and indignation of God. If God speak plurally, only in the majesty of a sovereign Prince, still Reverenter pensandum, that calls for reverence. What reverence? There are national differences in outward reverence and worships: some worship princes, and parents, and masters, in one; some in another fashion: children kneel to ask blessing of parents, in England; but where else? servants attend not with the same reverence upon masters in other nations, as with us: Accesses to their princes, are not with the same difficulty, nor the same solemnity in France, as in Turkey. But this rule goes through all nations, that in that disposition, and posture, and action of the body, which in that place is esteemed most humble and reverend, God is to be worshipped. Do so then here. God is your Father; ask blessing upon your knees; pray in that posture: God is your King; worship him with that worship which is highest in our use & estimation. We have no Grandes, that stand covered to the King: where there are such, though they stand covered in the King's presence, they do not speak to him for matters of grace, they do not sue to him: so, ancient Canons make difference of persons in the presence of God: where and how this and this shall dispose of themselves in the Church of God, dignity, and age, and infirmity will induce differences. But for prayer, there is no difference: one humiliation is required of all: As when the King comes in here, howsoever they sat diversely before, all return to one manner of expressing their acknowledgement of his presence: so at the Oremus, Let us pray, Let us all fall down, and worship, and kneel before the Lord our maker.  
So he speaks in our Text: not only as the Lord our King, intimating his providence and administration; but as the Lord our maker; and then a maker so, as that he made us in a Council; Faciamus, Let us: and that he speaks as in council, is an other argument for reverence. For what trust or freedom soever I have by his favour with any Counsellor of state; yet I should surely use another manner of consideration to this plurality in God, to this meeting in Council, to this intimation of a Trinity, then to those other actions, in which God is presented to us singly, as one God; for so he is presented to the natural man as well as to us. And here enters the necessity of this knowledge, Oportet denuo nasci; without a second birth, no salvation: And so no second birth without Baptism; no Baptism, but in the name of the Father, Son, and holy Ghost. It was the entertainment of God himself, his delight, his contemplation, for those infinite millions of generations, when he was without a world, without creatures, to joy in one another, in the Trinity, as Gregory Nazianzene, and a Poet as well as a Father, as most of the Fathers were, expresses it: 
— Ille suae splendorem cernere formae  
Gaudebat—   
It was the Father's delight to look upon himself in the Son, 
— Numénque suum triplicique parique  
Luce nitens—  And to see the whole Godhead, in a threefold and equal glory. It was Gods own delight, and it must be the delight of every Christian, upon particular occasions to carry his thoughts upon the several persons of the Trinity. If I have a bar of iron, that bar in that form will not nail a door: If a sow of lead, that lead in that form will not stop a leak: If a wedge of gold, that wedge will not buy my bread. The general notion of a mighty God, may less fit my particular purposes: But I coin my gold into currant money, when I apprehend God in the several notions of the Trinity; That, if I have been a prodigal son, I have a Father in heaven, and can go to him, and say, Father, I have sinned, and be received by him; That, if I be a decayed father, and need the sustentation of my own children, there is a Son in heaven, that will do more for me then my own children (of what good means or good nature soever they be) can or will do; If I be dejected in spirit, there is a holy Spirit in heaven, which shall bear witness to my spirit, that I am a child of God: And if the ghosts of those sinners, whom I made sinners, haunt me after their deaths, in returning to my memory, & reproaching my conscience with the heavy judgements that I have brought upon them; If after the death of my own sin, when my appetite is dead to some particular sin, the memory and sinful delight of those passed sins, the ghosts of those sins haunt me again: yet there is a holy Ghost in heaven, that shall exorcise these, and shall overshadow me. The God of the whole world is God alone, in the general notion, as he is so, God; but he is my God most especially, & most appliably, as he is received by me in the several notions of Father, Son, and holy Ghost.  
This is our East; 
II. Part. Occidens.  here we see God, God in all the persons, consulting, concurring to the making of us. But then my West presents itself; that is an occasion to humble me, in the next word: he makes but man; a man, that is, but Adam, but Earth. I remember 4. names, by which man is often called in the scriptures: & of these four, three do absolutely carry misery in their significations; three to one against any man, that he is miserable: One name of man is Ish; and that they derive à sonitu; Man is but a voice, but a sound, but a noise: he gins the noise himself, when he comes crying into the world; & when he goes out, perchance friends celebrate, perchance enemies calumniate him, with a divers voice, a divers noise. A melancholic man is but a groaning; a sportful man, but a song; an active man, but a trumpet; a mighty man, but a thunderclap: every man but Ish, but a sound, but a noise. An other name is Enosh. Enosh, is mere calamity, misery, depression. It is indeed most properly oblivion; And so the word is most elegantly used by David, Quid est homo? where the name of man is Enosh: And so that which we translate, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? is indeed, What is forgetfulness, that thou shouldest remember it; that thou shouldest think of that man, whom all the world hath forgotten? first man is but a voice, but a sound: but because fame & honour may come within that name of a sound, of a voice; therefore he is overtaken with another damp, man is but oblivion: his fame, his name shall be forgotten. One name man hath, that hath some taste of greatness and power in it, Gheber; and yet, I that am that man (says the Prophet, for there that name of man Gheber is used) I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of God's wrath. Man Ish is so miserable, 
Lam. 3.1.  as that he afflicts himself, cries, and whines out his own time; and man Enosh, so miserable, as that others afflict him, and bury him in ignominious oblivion: and man, that is, Gheber, the greatest & powerfullest of men, is yet but that man, that may possibly, that may justly see affliction by the rod of God's wrath. And from Gheber, he made Adam, which is the fourth name of man, indeed the first name of man, the name in this text, and the name to which every man must be called, and refer himself, and call himself by; earth, and red earth.  
Now God did not say of man, as of other creatures, Let us, or let the earth bring forth herbs, and fruits, and trees, as upon the third day; Now let the earth bring forth cattles and worms, as upon the sixth day, the same day that he made man: Non imperiali verbo, sed familiari manu, says Tertullian; God calls not man out with an imperious command, but he leads him out with a familiar, with his own hand. And it is not, Fiat homo, but, Faciamus; not, Let there be, but, Let us make man. Man is but an earthen vessel. It is true: but when we are upon that consideration, God is the potter: if God will be that, I am well content to be this: let me be any thing, so that that I am be from my God. I am as well content to be a sheep as a lion, so God will be my shepherd; and the Lord is my shepherd: to be a cottage, as a castle; the house, as a city, so God will be the builder: and the Lord builds, and watches the city, the house; this house, this city, me: to be rye, as wheat, so God will be the husbandman: and the Lord plants me, and waters, and weeds, and gives the increase: and to be clothed in leather, as well as in silk, so God will be the merchant: and he clothed me in Adam, and assures me of clothing, in clothing the lilies of the field; and is fitting the robe of Christ's righteousness to me now this minute: Adam is as good to me, as Gheber; a clod of earth, as a hill of earth, so God be the potter.  
God made man of earth, not of air, not of fire. Man hath many offices, that appertain to this world, and whilst he is here, must not withdraw himself from those offices of mutual society, upon pretence of zeal, or better serving God in a retired life. A ship will no more come to the harbour without ballast, then without sails: A man will no more get to heaven without discharging his duties to other men, then without doing them to God himself: Man liveth not by bread only, says Christ; 
Luke 4.4.  but yet he liveth by bread too: every man must do the duties, every man must bear the encumbrances of some calling.  
Pulvis es, Thou art earth: he whom thou treadest upon, is no less; and he that treads upon thee, is no more. Positively, it is a low thing to be but earth: and yet the low earth, is the quiet centre: there may be rest, acquiescence, content in the lowest condition: But comparatively, earth is as high as the highest. Challenge him that magnifies himself above thee, to meet thee in Adam; there bid him, if he will have more nobility, more greatness than thou, take more original sin than thou hast. If God have submitted thee to as much sin, and penalty of sin, as him; he hath afforded thee as much, and as noble earth as him. And if he will not try it in the root, in your equality in Adam; yet, in another test, another furnace, in the grave, he must: there all dusts are equal. Except an epitaph tell me who lies there, I cannot tell by the dust; nor by the epitaph know, which is the dust it speaks of, if another have been laid there before, or after, in the same grave: nor can any epitaph be confident in saying, Here lies; but, Here was laid: for so various, so vicissitudinarie is all this world, as that even the dust of the grave hath revolutions. As the motions of an upper sphere imprint a motion in a lower sphere, other then naturally it would have; so the changes of the life work after death. And as envy supplants and removes us alive; a shovel removes us, and throws us out of our grave, after death. No limbeck, no weights can tell you, This is dust royal, this plebeian dust: no commission, no inquisition can say, This is catholic, this is heretical dust. All lie alike, and all shall rise alike: alike, that is, at once, and upon one command. The saint cannot accelerate, the reprobate cannot retard the resurrection. And all that rise to the right hand, shall be equally kings; and all at the left, equally what? the worst name we can call them by, or affect them with, is devil: and then they shall have bodies to be tormented in, which devils have not. Miserable, unexpressible, unimaginable, macerable condition, where the sufferer would be glad to be but a devil; where it were some happiness, and some kind of life, to be able to die; and a great preferment, to be nothing!  
He made us all of earth, and all of red earth: our earth was red, even when it was in God's hands: a redness that amounts to a shamefastness, to a blushing at our infirmities, is imprinted in us by God's hands: for this redness is but a conscience, a guiltiness of needing a continual supply, and succession of more and more grace: and we are all red, red so, even from the beginning, and in our best state. Adam had, the angels had thus much of this infirmity, that though they had a great measure of grace, they needed more. The prodigal child grew poor enough after he had received his portion: and he may be wicked enough, that trusts upon former or present grace, and seeks not more. This redness, a blushing, that is, an acknowledgement that we could not subsist with any measure of faith, except we pray for more faith; nor of grace, except we seek more grace, we have from the hand of God: and an other redness from his hand too, the blood of his Son; for that blood was effused by Christ, in the vail of this ransom for us all, and accepted by God in the vail thereof for us all: and this redness is in the nature thereof as extensive, as the redness derived from Adam is: both reach to all; so we were red earth in the hands of God, as redness denotes our general infirmities: and as redness denotes the blood of his Son, our Saviour, all have both. But that redness which we have contracted from blood shed by ourselves, the blood of our own souls, by sin, was not upon us when we were in the hands of God: that redness is not his tincture, not his complexion: no decree of his is writ in any such red ink. Our sins are our own, & our destruction is from ourselves. We are not as accessaries, and God as principal in this soul-murder: God forbidden. We are not as executioners of God's sentence, and God the malefactor in this soul-damnation: God forbidden. Cain came not red in his brother's blood out of God's hands; nor David red with Vriahs' blood; nor Achitophel with his own; nor Judas with Christ's, or his own. That that Pilate did illusorily, God can do truly, wash his hands from the blood of any of those men. It were a weak plea to say, I killed not that man; but it is true, I commanded one who was under my command, to kill him: It is rather a prevarication, than a justification of God, to say, God is not the author of sin in any man: but is is true, God makes that man's sin, that sin. God is innocence: and the beams that flow from him, are of the same nature and colour. Christ, when he appeared in heaven, was not red, but white; his hand, his head, and hairs too: he, and that that grows from him; he, and we, as we come from his hands, are white too: his angels, that provoke us to the imitation of that pattern, are so in white; two men, 
Acts 1.10.  two angels stood by the apostles in white apparel: the imitation is laid upon us, by precept too: 
Eccles 9.8.  At all times let thy garments be white; those actions, in which thou appearest to the world, innocent. It is true that Christ is both; My beloved is white and ruddy, 
Cant. 5.10.  says the Spouse: but the white was his own; his redness is from us. That which Zipporah said to her husband Moses in anger, the Church may say to Christ in thankfulness, Verè sponsus sanguinum, Thou art truly a bloody husband to me; Damim, sanguinum; of bloods, bloods in the plural: for all our bloods are upon him. This was a mercy to the militant Church, that even the triumphant Church wondered at it. They knew not Christ, when he came up into heaven in red; Who is this that cometh in red garments? 
Isa. 63.1.  wherefore is thy apparel red, like him that treadeth in the winepress? They knew he went down in white, in entire innocence; and they wondered to see him return in red: but he satisfies them; Calcavi, You think I have trodden the winepress, and you mistake it not: I have trodden the winepress: and Calcavi solus, and that alone: All the redness, all the blood of the whole world is upon me: and as he adds, Non vir de gentibus; Of all people there was none with me; with me so, as to have any part in the merit; so, of all people there was none with me: without me so, as to be excluded by me, without their own fault, from the benefit of the merit. This redness he carried up to heaven; 
Col. 1.21.  for by the blood of his cross came peace, both to the things in heaven, and the things on earth. For the peccabilitie, that possibility of sinning, which is in the nature of the angels of heaven, would break out into sin, but for that confirmation, which those angels have received in the blood of Christ. This redness he carried to heaven; and this redness he hath left upon earth, that all we, miserable clods of earth, might be tempered with his blood: that in his blood, exhibited in his holy & blessed Sacrament, our long robes might be made white in the blood of the Lamb: that, though our sins be robes, habits of long continuance in sin; yet, through that redness which our sins have cast upon him, we might come to participate of that whiteness, that righteousness, which is his own: We; that is, all we: for, as to take us in, who are of low condition, and obscure station, a cloud is made white, by his sitting upon it; He sat upon a white cloud: so, to let the highest see, that they have no whiteness, but from him, he makes the throne white by sitting upon it: He sat upon a great white throne. It had been great, if it had not been white: white is the colour of dilatation; Goodness enlarges the throne. It had not been white, if he had not sat upon it. That goodness only which consists in glorifying God, and God in Christ, and Christ in the sincerity of the truth, is true whiteness. God hath no redness in himself, no anger towards us, till he considers us as sinners. God casts no redness upon us, inflicts no necessity, no constraint of sinning upon us: we have died ourselves in sins as red as scarlet, we have drowned ourselves in such a red sea. But as a garment that was washed in the Red sea, 
Psal. 106.22.  would come out white, (so wonderful works hath God done at the Red sea, says David) so doth his whiteness work through our red, and makes this Adam, this red earth, Calculum candidum, that white stone, that receives a new name, not Ish, not Enosh, not Gheber; no name that tastes of misery, nor of vanity; but that name renewed and manifested, which was imprinted upon us in our elections, the sons of God; the irremoveable, the undisinheritable sons of God.  
Be pleased to receive this note at parting, that there is Macula alba, a spot, and yet white, as well as a red spot: a whiteness, that is an indication of a leprosy, as well as a redness. It is whole-Pelagianisme, to think nature alone sufficient; half-Pelagianisme, to think grace once received to be sufficient; super-Pelagianisme, to think our actions can bring God in debt to us by merit, and supererogation, & Catharisme, imaginary purity, in canonising ourselves as present saints, and condemning all that differ from us, as reprobates. All these are white spots, and have the colour of goodness; but are indications of leprosy. So is that, that God threatens, 
Joel 1.7.  Decorticatio ficûs & albi rami; that the figtree shall be barked, and the boughs thereof left white. To be left white without bark, was an indication of a speedy withering. Ostensa candescunt, & arescunt, says S. Gregory of that place: the bough that lies open without bark, looks white, but perisheth. The good works that are done openly to please men, have their reward (says Christ) that is, shall never have reward. To pretend to do good, and not mean it; to do things good in themselves, but not to good ends; to go towards good ends, but not by good ways; to make the deceiving of men thine end, or the praise of men thine end; all this may have a whiteness, a colour of good: but all this is a barking of the bough, and an indication of a mischievous leprosy. There is no good whiteness, but a reflection from Christ Jesus, in an humble acknowledgement that we have none of our own; and in a confident assurance, that in our worst estate we may be made partakers of his. We are all red earth. In Adam, we would not; since Adam, we could not avoid sin, and the concomitants thereof, miseries; which we have called our West, our cloud, our darkness. But then we have a North, that scatters these clouds, in the next word, Adimaginem; that we are made to another pattern, in another likeness than our own. Faciamus hominem. So fare we are gone, East and West; which is half our compass, and all this day's voyage: for we are struck upon the sand, and must stay another tide and another gale for our North and South.  
FINIS.   

THE SECOND SERMON PREACHED BEFORE KING CHARLES, Upon the xxvi verse of the first Chapter of GENESIS  
By Dr. DONNE DEAN OF PAUL'S.  
¶ Printed by the Printers to the University of CAMBRIDGE. MDCXXXIIII.   
Genesis 1.26. 
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.  
BY fair occasion from these words, we proposed to you the whole compass of man's voyage, from his launching forth in this world, to his anchoring in the next; from his hoisting sail here, to his striking sail there: in which compass we designed to you his four quarters: first, his East, where he must begin, the fundamental knowledge of the Trinity (for that we found to be the specification & distinctive character of a Christian) where, though that be so, we shown you also, why we were not called Trinitarians, but Christians: and we shown you the advantage that man hath, in laying hold upon God in these several notions; That the prodigal son hath an indulgent father; that the decayed father hath an abundant son; that the dejected spirit hath a Spirit of comfort to fly to in heaven. And as we shown you from S. Paul, that it was an Atheism to be no Christian: (Without God, says he, as long as without Christ) so we lamented the slackness of Christians, that they did not seriously and particularly consider the persons of the Trinity, and especially the holy Ghost, in their particular actions: And then we came to that consideration, whether this doctrine were established, or directly insinuated, in this plural word of our text, Faciamus, Let us make man: and we found that doctrine to be here, and here first, of any place in the Bible: and finding God to speak in the plural, we accepted (for a time) that interpretation which some had made thereof, That God spoke in the person of a Sovereign Prince, and therefore (as they do) in the plural, We: And thereby having established reverence to Princes, we claimed, in God's behalf, the same reverence to him; that men would demean themselves here, when God is spoken to in prayer, as reverently as when they speak to the King. But afterwards we found God to speak here not only as our King, but as our Maker, as God himself, and God in council, Faciamus: And we applied thereunto the difference of our respect to a person of that honourable rank, when we came before him at the councel-table, and when we came to him at his own table; and thereby advanced the seriousness of this consideration, God in the Trinity. And farther we sailed not with our Eastern wind. Our West we considered in the next word, Hominem; That, though we were made by the whole Trinity, yet the whole Trinity made us but men, and men in this name of our text, Adam; and Adam is but earth: and that is our West, our declination, our Sunset. We passed over the four names, by which man is ordinarily expressed in the scriptures; and we found necessary misery in three of them; and possible, nay, likely misery in the fourth, in the best name. We insisted upon the name of our text, Adam, earth; and had some use of these notes; first, That if I were but earth, God was pleased to be the potter; If I but a sheep, he a shepherd; If I but a cottage, he a builder: So he work upon me, let me be what he will. We noted, that God made us earth, not air, not fire; that man hath bodily and worldly duties to perform, and is not all spirit in this life. Devotion is his soul: but he hath a body of discretion & usefulness to invest in some calling. We noted too, that in being earth we are equal: we tried that equality, first in the root, in Adam; there if any man will be nobler earth than I, he must have more original sin than I: for that was all Adam's patrimony, all that he could give. And we tried this equality in another furnace, in the grave; where there is no means to distinguish royal from plebeian, nor catholic from heretical dust. And lastly we noted, that this our earth was red; & considered in what respect it was red, even in God's hands; but found that in the bloud-rednesse of sin, God had no hand; but sin, and destructions for sin, were wholly from ourselves: which consideration we ended with this, that there was Macula alba, a white spot of leprosy, as well as a red: and we found the overvaluation of our own purity, and the uncharitable condemnation of all that differ from us, to be that white spot. And so fare we sailed with that Western wind, & are come to our third point in this our compass, our North.  
In this point, 
III. Part. Aquilo.  the North, we place our first comfort. The North is not always the comfortablest clime; nor is the North always a type of happiness in the scriptures. Many times God threatens storms from the North: but even in those Northern storms, we consider their action, that they scatter, they dissipate those clouds which were gathered, and so induce a serenity. 
Job 37.22.  And so fair weather comes from the North. The consideration of our West, our low estate, that we are but earth, but red earth, died red by ourselves; and that imaginary white, which appears so to us, is but a white of leprosy: this West enwraps us in heavy clouds of murmuring in this life, that we cannot live so freely as beasts do; and in clouds of desperation for the next life, that we cannot die so absolutely as beasts do. We die all our lives; and yet we live after our deaths: These are our clouds; & then the North shakes these clouds. 
Prov. 25.13.  The Northwind driveth away the rain, says Solomon. There is a North in our text, that drives all these tears from our eyes. 
Cant. 4.16.  Christ calls upon the North as well as the South, to blow upon his garden, and to diffuse the perfumes thereof. Adversity, as well as prosperity, opens the bounty of God unto us; and oftentimes better. But that is not the benefit of the North, in our present consideration: but this is it, that first our Sun sets in the West. The Eastern dignity which we received in our first creation, as we were the work of the whole Trinity, falls under a Western cloud, that that Trinity made us but earth. And then blows our North, and scatters this cloud; that this earth hath a nobler form than any other part or limb of the world: for we are made by a fairer pattern, by a nobler image, by a higher likeness. Faciamus; Though we make but a man, Let us make him in our image, after our likeness.  
The variety which the holy Ghost uses here in the pen of Moses, hath given occasion to diverse, to raise diverse observations upon these words, which seem diverse, Image and Likeness; as also in the variety of the phrase: for it is thus conceived and laid, In our image; and then, After our likeness. I know it is a good rule that Damascen gives, Parva non sunt parva, ex quibus magna proveniunt; Nothing is to be neglected, as little, from which great things may arise: If the consequence may be great, the thing must not be thought little. No Jod in the scripture shall perish; therefore no Jod is superfluous: if it were superfluous, it might perish. Words, and less particles than words, have busied the whole Church.  
In the Council of Ephesus, where Bishops in a great number excommunicated Bishops in a greater; Bishop against Bishop, and Patriarch against Patriarch; in which case, when both parties had made strong parties in Court, and the Emperor forbore to declare himself on either side for a time, he was told, that he refused to assent to that which 6000 Bishops had agreed in: the strife was but for a word, whether the blessed Virgin might be called Deipara, The mother of God; for Christipara, The mother of Christ; which Christ all agree to be God. Nestorius and all his party agreed with Cyril, that she might be. In the Council of Chalcedon, the difference was not so great, as for a word composed of syllables. It was but for a syllable, whether Ex or In. The heretics condemned then, confessed Christ to be Ex duabus naturis, to be composed of two natures, at first; but not to be In duabus naturis, not to consist of two natures after. And for that In, they were thrust out. In the Council of Nice, it was not so much as a syllable made of letters; for it was but for one letter; whether Homoousion, or Homöusion, was the issue. Where the question hath not been of diverse words, nor syllables, nor letters, but only of the place of words, what tempestuous differences have risen! How much hath sola sides and sides sola changed the case! Nay, where there hath been no quarrel for precedency, for transposing of words, or syllables, or letters, where there hath not been so much as a letter in question, how much doth an accent  a sense! An interrogation or no interrogation, will make it directly contrary. All Christian expositors read those words of Cain, My sin is greater than can be pardoned, 
Gen. 4.13.  positively; and so they are evident words of desperation. The Jews read them with an interrogation, Are my sins greater than can be pardoned? and so they are words of compunction and repentance. The prophet Micheas says, 
Mich. 5.3.  that Bethlehem is a small place: 
Matth. 2.6.  The Evangelist S. Matthew says, No small place. An interrogation in Micheas mouth reconciles it; Art thou a small place? amounts to that, Thou art not. Sounds, voices, words, must not be neglected: for Christ's forerunner, John Baptist, qualified himself no otherwise; he was but a voice: and Christ himself is Verbum; The Word is the name even of the Son of God. No doubt but Statesmen & Magistrates find often the danger of having suffered small abuses to pass uncorrected. We that see State-business but in the glass of story, and cannot be shut out of chronicles, see there, upon what little objects the eye and the jealousy of the State is oftentimes forced to bend itself. We know in whose times in Rome a man might not weep, he might not sigh, he might not look pale, he might not be sick, but it was informed against, as a discontent, as a murmuring against the present government, and an inclination to change. And truly many times, upon Damascens true ground, though not always well applied, Parva non sunt parva; Nothing may be thought little, when the consequence may prove great. In our own sphere, in the Church, we are sure it is so; great inconveniences grew upon small tolerations. Therefore in that business, which occasioned all that trouble which we mentioned before, in the Council of Ephesus, when S. Cyril wrote to the Clergy of his diocese about it, at first he says, Praestiterat abstinere, It had been better these questions had not been raised: but (says he) Si his nugis nos adoriantur, If they vex us with these impertinences, these trifles: And yet these, which were but trifles at first, came to occasion Counsels; and then to divide Council against Council; and then to force the Emperor to take away the power of both Counsels, and govern in Council by his Vicar general, a secular Lord sent from Court. And therefore did some of the Ancients (particularly Philastrius) cry down some opinions for heresies, which were not matters of faith, but of philosophy; and even in philosophy truly held by them who were condemned for heretics, and mistaken by their Judges that condemned them. Little things were called in question, lest great things should pass unquestioned: and some of these upon Damascens true ground (still true in rule, but not always in the application) Parva non sunt parva; Nothing may be thought little, where the consequence may prove great. Descend we from those great spheres, the State and the Church, into a lesser, that is, the conscience of particular men, and consider the danger of exposing those vines to little foxes; 
Cant. 2.15.  of leaving small sins unconsidered, unrepented, uncorrected. In that glistering circle in the firmament, which we call the Galaxy, the milkie-way, there is not one star of any of the six great magnitudes, which Astronomers proceed upon, belonging to that circle: it is a glorious circle, and possesseth a great part of heaven; and yet is all of so little stars as have no name, no knowledge taken of them: So certainly are there many Saints in heaven, that shine as stars, and yet are not of those great magnitudes, to have been Patriarches, or Prophets, or Apostles, or Martyrs, or Doctors, or Virgins; but good & blessed souls, that have religiously performed the duties of inferior callings, and no more. And as certainly are there many souls tormented in hell, that never sinned sin of any of the great magnitudes, Idolatry, Adultery, Murder, or the like; but inconsiderately have slid, and insensibly continued in the practice and habit of lesser sins. But parva non sunt parva; Nothing may be thought little, where the consequence may prove great. 
Matth. 12.36.  When our Saviour says, That we shall give an account for every idle word in the day of judgement, what great hills of little sands will oppress us then! And if substances of sin were removed, yet what circumstances of sin would condemn us! If idle words have this weight, there can be no word thought idle in the Scriptures: And therefore I blame not in any, I decline not in mine own practice, the making use of the variety and copiousness of the holy Ghost, who is ever abundant, and yet never superfluous in expressing his purpose in change of words. And so no doubt we might do now in observing a difference between these words in our text, Image, and Likeness; and between these two forms of expressing it, In our image, and, After our likeness. This might be done. But that that must be done, will possess all our time; that is, to declare (taking the two for this time to be but a farther illustration of one another; Image and Likeness, to our present purpose, to be all one) what this image and this likeness imports; and how this North scatters our former cloud; what our advantage is, that we are made to an image, to a pattern; and our obligation to set a pattern before us in all our actions.  
God appointed Moses to make all that he made, by a pattern. God himself made all that he made, according to a pattern. God had deposited and laid up in himself certain forms, patterns, Ideas of every thing that he made. He made nothing, of which he had not preconceived the form, and predetermined in himself, I will make it thus. And when he had made any thing, he saw it was good; Good, because it answered the pattern, the image; Good, because it was like to that. And therefore though of other creatures God pronounced they were good, because they were presently like their pattern, that is, like that form which was in him for them: yet of man, he forbore to say that he was good; because his conformity to his pattern was to appear after in his subsequent actions. Now as God made man after another pattern, and therefore we have a dignity above all, that we had another manner of creation than the rest: so have we a comfort above all, that we have another manner of administration than the rest. God exercises another manner of providence upon man, then upon other creatures. 
Matth. 10.29.  A sparrow falls not without God, says Christ: yet no doubt God works otherwise in the fall of eminent persons, then in the fall of sparrows; for ye are of more value than many sparrows, says Christ there of every man: & some men single, are of more value than many men. God doth not thank the ant, for her industry and good husbandry in providing for herself. God doth not reward the foxes, 
Judg. 15.4.  for concurring with Samson in his revenge. God doth not fee the lion, 
1. King. 13.24  which was his executioner upon the Prophet which had disobeyed his commandment; 
2. King. 2.24.  nor those few she-bears, which slew the petulant children who had calumniated and reproached Elisha. God doth not fee them before, nor thank them after, nor take knowledge of their service: But for those men that served God's execution upon the idolaters of the golden calf, 
Exod. 32.25.  it is pronounced in their behalf, that therein they consecrated themselves unto God; and for that service God made that Tribe, the Tribe of Levi, his portion, his clergy, 
Gen. 22.16.  his consecrated Tribe: So, Quia fecisti hoc, says God to Abraham, By myself I have sworn, because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thee. 
2. Pet. 2.22.  So neither is God angry with the dog that turns to his vomit; nor with the sow, that after her washing wallows in the mire. But of man in that case he says, 
Hebr. 6.4.  It is impossible for those who were once enlightened, if they fall away, to renew themselves again by repentance. The creatures live under his law, but a law imposed thus, This they shall do, this they must do: Man lives under another manner of law, This you shall do, that is, This you should do, This I would have you do. And, Fac hoc, Do this, and you shall live; disobey, and you shall die: but yet the choice is yours; choose you this day life or death. So that this is God's administration in the creature, that he hath imprinted in them an instinct, and so he hath something to preserve in them: In man, his administration is this, that he hath imprinted in him a faculty of will and election, and hath something to reward in him. That instinct in the creature God leaves to the natural working thereof in itself: but the freewill of man God visits & assists with his grace, to do supernatural things. When the creature doth an extraordinary action above the nature thereof (as when Balaams' ass spoke) the creature exercises no faculty, no will in itself; but God forced it to that it did. When man doth any thing conducing to supernatural ends, though the work be Gods, the will of man is not merely passive. The will of man is but God's agent; but still an agent it is, and an agent in another manner than the tongue of the beast. For the will considered as a will (and grace never destroys nature; nor, though it make a dead will a live will, or an ill will a good will, doth it make the will no will) might refuse or omit that it does. So that because we are created by another pattern, we are governed by another law, and another providence.  
Go thou then the same way. If God wrought by a pattern, and writ by a copy, and proceeded by a precedent; do thou so too. Never say, There is no Church without error; therefore I will be bound by none, but frame a Church of mine own, or be a Church to myself. What greater injustice then to propose no image, no pattern to thyself to imitate; and yet propose thyself for a pattern, for an image to be adored? Thou wilt have singular opinions, and singular ways, differing from all other men: and yet all that are not of thy opinion, must be heretics; and all reprobates, that go not thy ways. Propose good patterns to thyself, and thereby become a fit pattern for others. God (we see) was the first that made images; and he was the first that forbade them: he made them for imitation; he forbade them, in danger of adoration. For, what a baseness, what a madness of the soul is it, to worship that which is no better, nay, not so good as itself! Worship belongs to the best: know then thy distance and thy period, how fare to go, and where to stop. Dishonour not God by an image, in worshipping it; and yet benefit thyself by it in following it: There is no more danger out of a picture, then out of a history, if thou intent no more in either then example. Though thou have a West, a dark and a sad condition, that thou art but earth, a man of infirmities, and ill-counselled in thyself: yet thou hast here a North, that scatters and dispels these clouds, that God proposes to thee in his Scriptures; and otherwise, images, patterns of good and holy men to go by. But beyond this North, this assistance of good examples of men, thou hast a South, a Meridional height, by which thou seest thine image, thy pattern, to be no copy, no other man, but the original itself, God himself: Faciamus ad nostram; Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.  
Here we consider first, where the image is; 
IIII Part. Meridies.  and then, what it doth: first, in what part of man God hath imprinted this his image; and then, what this image confers and derives upon man, what it works in man. And as when we seek God in his essence, we are advised to proceed by negatives (God is not mortal, not passable:) so when we seek the image of God in man, we begin with a negative, This image is not his Body. Tertullian declined to think it was; nay, Tertullian inclined others to think so; for he is the first that is noted to have been the author of that opinion that God had a body: yet S. Augustine excuses Tertullian for heresy: Because (says he) Tertullian might mean, That it was so sure that there is a God; and that God was a certain, though not a finite essence; that God was so fare from being nothing, as that he had rather a body. Because it was possible to give a good interpretation of Tertullian, that charitable Father would excuse him of heresy. I would S. Augustine's charity might prevail with them that pretend to be Augustinianissimi, and to adore him so much in the Roman Church, not to cast the name of Heresy upon every problem, nor the name of Heretic upon every inquirer of truth. S. Augustine would deliver Tertullian from heresy, in a point concerning God; and they will condemn us of heresy, in every point that may be drawn to concern, not the Church, but the Court of Rome; not their doctrine, but their profit. Malo de misericordia Deo rationem reddere, quàm de crudelitate; I shall better answer God for my mildness, then for my severity. And though anger towards a brother, or a Racha, or a Fool, will bear an action; yet he shall recover less against me at that bar, whom I have called weak, or misled (as I must necessarily call many in the Roman Church) than he whom I have passionately and peremptorily called heretic: for I dare call an opinion heresy for the matter, a great while before I dare call the man that holds it an heretic: for that consists much in the manner. It must be matter of faith, before the matter be heresy; but there must be pertinacy after convenient instruction, before the man be an heretic. But how excusable soever Tertullian be herein, in S. Augustine's charity, there was a whole sect of heretics an hundred years after Tertullian, the Audianis, who over literally taking those places of Scripture, where God is said to have hands, and feet, and eyes, and ears, believed God to have a body like ours; and accordingly interpreted this text, that in that image, and that likeness, a bodily likeness, consisted this image of God in man. And yet even these men, these Audians, Epiphanius (who first took knowledge of them) calls but schismatics, not heretics: so loath is charity to say the worst of any. Yet we must remember them of the Roman persuasion, that they come too near giving God a body in their pictures of God the Father: and they bring the body of God, that body which God the Son hath assumed, the body of Christ, too near in their Transubstantiation: not too near our faith (for so it cannot be brought too near to our sense, so it is as really there as we are there) not too near in the ubi; for so it is there, there, that is, in that place to which the Sacrament extends itself: for the Sacrament extends as well to heaven, from whence it fetches grace, as to the table from whence it delivers bread and wine: but too near in modo; for it comes not thither that way. We must necessarily complain, that they make religion too bodily a thing. Our Saviour Christ corrected Marie Magdalen's zeal, where she flew to him in a personal devotion; and said, 
John 20.17.  Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father. Fix your meditations upon Christ Jesus, so as he is now at the right hand of his Father in heaven, and entangle not yourselves so with controversies about his body, as to lose real charity for imaginary zeal; nor enlarge yourselves so fare in the pictures and images of his body, as to worship them more than him. As Damascen says of God, that he is Superprincipale principium, A beginning before any beginning we can conceive; and praeterea aeternitas, an eternity infinitely elder than any eternity we can imagine: so he is superspiritualis Spiritus, such a Superspirit, as that the soul of man, and the substance of angels, is but a body compared to this Spirit. God hath no body, though Tertullian disputed it, though the Audians preached it, though the Papists paint it: and therefore this image of God is not in the body of man that way.  
Nor that way neither which some others have assigned, That God, who hath no body as God, yet in the creation did assume that form which man hath now, and so made man in his image, that is, in that form which he had then assumed. Some of the ancients thought so; and some other men of great estimation in the Roman Church have thought so too. In particular, Oleaster, a great officer in the Inquisition of Spain. But great inquirers into other men, are easy neglecters of themselves. The image of God is not in man's body this way.  
Nor that third way which others have imagined, that is, that when God said, Let us make man after our likeness, God had respect to that form, which in the fullness of time his Son was to take upon him upon earth. Let us make him now (says God) at first, like that which I intent hereafter my Son shall be: for though this were spoken before the fall of man, and so before any occasion of decreeing the sending of Christ; yet in the School a great part of great men adhere to that opinion, That God from all eternity had a purpose, that his Son should become man in this world, though Adam had not fallen; Non ut medicus, sed ut Dominus, ad nobilitandum genus humanum, say they: Though Christ had not come as a Redeemer, if man had not needed him by sin, but had kept his first state; yet as a Prince, that desired to heap honour upon him whom he loves, to do man an honour by his assuming that nature, Christ (say they) should have come: and to that image, that form which he was to take then, was man made in this text, say these imaginers. But (alas!) how much better were wit and learning bestowed, to prove to the Gentiles that a Christ must come (that they believe not) to prove to the Jews, that the Christ is come (that they believe not) to prove to our own consciences, that the same Christ may come again this minute to judgement (we live as though we believed not that) then to have filled the world, and torn the Church with frivolous disputations, Whether Christ should have come if Adam had not fallen! woe unto fomentours of frivolous disputations. None of these ways: not because God hath a body, not because God assumed a body; not because it was intended that Christ should be born, before it was intended that man should be made, is this image of God in the body of man: nor hath it in any other relation respect to the body; but, as we say in the School, arguitiuè, and significatiué; that because God hath given man a body of a noblerform then any other creature, we infer, and argue, and conclude from thence, that God is otherwise represented in man then in any other creature: and so fare is this image of God in the body above that in the creatures, that as you see some pictures, to which the very tables are jewels; some watches, to which the very cases are jewels; and therefore they have outward cases too; and so the picture and the watch are in that outward case, of what meaner stuff soever that be: so is this image in this body, as in an outward case, so as that you may not injure nor enfeeble this body, neither by sinful intemperance and licentiousness, nor by inordinate fastings or other disciplines of imaginary merits, while the body is alive; for the image of God is in it: nor defraud the body of decent burial and due solemnities after death; for the image of God is to return to it. But yet the body is but the outward case, and God looks not for the gild, or enamelling, or painting of that; but requires the labour and cost therein to be bestowed upon the table itself, in which this image is immediately, that is, the soul: and that is truly the ubi, the place where this image is. And there remains only now the operation thereof, how this image of God in the soul of man works.  
The sphere then of this Intelligence, the gallery for this picture, the arch for this statue, the table and frame and shrine for this image of God, is inwardly and immediately the soul of man: not immediately so, as that the soul of man is a part of the essence of God; for so essentially Christ only is the image of God. S. Augustine at first thought so; Putabam te, Deus, corpus lucidum, & me frustum de illo corpore: I took thee, O God (says that Father) to be a globe of fire, and my soul to be a spark of that fire; thee to be a body of light, and my soul to be a beam of that light. But S. Augustine doth not only retract that in himself, but dispute against it in the Manichees. But this image is in our soul, as the soul is the wax, and this image the seal. The comparison is S. Cyrils; and he adds well, that no seal but that which printed the wax at first, can fit that wax, and fill that impression after: no image, but the image of God, can fit our soul; every other seal is too narrow, too shallow for it. The magistrate is sealed with the Lion; the Wolf will not fit that seal: the magistrate hath a power in his hand, but not oppression. Princes are sealed with the Crown; the Mitre will not fit that seal. Powerfully and graciously they protect the Church, and are supreme heads of the Church; but they minister not the Sacraments of the Church: they give preferments, but they give not the capacity of preferments: they give order who shall have, but they have not Orders by which they are enabled to have that they have. Men of inferior and laborious callings in the world are sealed with the Cross; a Rose, or a bunch of Grapes will not answer that seal: ease and plenty in age must not be looked for without crosses, and labour, and industry in youth. All men, Prince and people, Clergy and Magistrate, are sealed with the image of God, with a conformity to him; and worldly seals will not answer that, nor fill up that seal. We should wonder to see a mother in the midst of many sweet children, passing her time in making babies and puppets for her own delight. We should wonder to see a man, whose chambers and galleries were full of curious masterpieces, thrust in a village-fayre, to look upon sixpenie pictures & three-farthing prints. We have all the image of God at home; and we all make babies, fancies of honour in our ambitions. The masterpiece is our own, in our own bosom; and we thrust in countrey-fayres, that is, we endure the distempers of any unseasonable weather, in night-journeys and watchings; we endure the oppositions, and scorns, and triumphs of a rival and competitour, that seeks with us, and shares with us. We endure the guiltiness and reproach of having deceived the trust which a confident friend reposes in us, and solicit his wife or daughter. We endure the decay of fortune, of body, of soul, of honour, to possess lovers pictures; pictures that are not originals, not made by that hand of God, Nature; but artificial beauties: and for that body we give a soul; and for that drug which might have been bought where they bought it, for a shilling, we give an estate. The image of God is more worth than all substances; and we give it for colours, for dreams, for shadows.  
But the better to prevent the loss, let us consider the having of this image; in what respect, in what operation this image is in our soul: for whether this image be in those faculties, which we have in Nature; or in those qualifications which we have in Grace; or in those super-illustrations, which the blessed shall have in Glory, hath exercised the contemplation of many. Properly this image is in nature; in the natural reason, and other faculties of the immortal soul of man; for thereupon doth S. Bernard say, Imago Dei uri potest in gehenna, non exuri; till the soul be burnt to ashes, to nothing (which cannot be done, no not in hell) the image of God cannot be burnt out of the soul; for it is radically, primarily in the very soul itself: and whether that soul be infused into the elect, or reprobate, that image is in that soul: as fare as he hath a soul by nature, he hath the image of God by nature in it. But then the seal is deeper cut, or harder pressed, or better preserved in some then in others, and in some other considerations then merely natural: therefore we may consider man, who was made here to the image of God, and of God in three persons, to have been made so in God's intendment three ways: Man had this image in Nature, and doth deface it; he hath it also in Grace here, and so doth refresh it; and he shall have it in Glory hereafter, and that shall fix it, establish it. And in every of these three, in this Trinity in man, Nature, Grace, and Glory, man hath not only the image of God, but the image of all the persons of the Trinity, in every of his three capacities. He hath the image of the Father, the image of the Son, the image of the holy Ghost, in nature; and all these also in grace; and all these in glory too. How all these are in all, I cannot hope to handle particularly, not though I were upon the first grain of our sand, upon the first dram of your patience, upon the first flash of my strength: But a clear repeating of these many branches, that these things are thus, that all the persons of the heavenly Trinity are (in their image) in every branch of this humane Trinity in man, may (at least must) suffice.  
In nature then, man, that is, the soul of man, hath this image of God; of God, considered in his unity, entirely, altogether in this, that this soul is made of nothing, proceeds of nothing. All other creatures are made of that preexistent matter which God had made before; so were our bodies too, but our souls of nothing: now not to be made at all, is to be God himself; only God himself was never made. But to be made of nothing, to have no other parent but God, no other element but the breath of God, no other instrument but the purpose of God, this is to be the image of God; for this is nearest to God himself (who was never made at all) to be made of nothing. And then man (considered in nature) is otherwise the nearest representation of God too: for the steps which we consider, are four; First, Esse, Being; for some things have only a being, and no life, as stones: Secondly, Vivere, Living; for some things have life, and no sense, as plants: and then thirdly, Sentire, Sense; for some things have sense, and no understanding; which understanding and reason man hath with his being, and life, and sense; and so is in a nearer station to God, than any creature, and a livelier image of him (who is the root of being) then all they; because man only hath all the declarations of beings. Nay, if we consider God's eternity, the soul of man hath such an image of that, as that, though man had a beginning, which the original, the eternal God himself had not; yet man shall no more have an end, than the original, the eternal God himself shall have. And this image of eternity, this post-meridian, this afternoon eternity, that is, this perpetuity and after-everlastingnesse is in man, merely as a natural man, without any consideration of grace: for the reprobate can no more die, that is, come to nothing, than the elect. It is but of the natural man that Theodoret says, A King built a city, and erected his statue in the midst of that city; that is, God made man, and imprinted his image in his soul. How will this King take it (says that Father) to have this statue thrown down? Every man doth so, if he do not exalt his natural faculties, if he do not hearken to the law written in his heart, if he do not run, as Plato, or as Socrates, in the ways of virtuous actions; he throws down the statue of this King, he defaces the image of God. How would this King take it (says he) if any other statue, especially the statue of his enemy should be set up in his place? Every man doth so too, that embraces false opinions in matter of doctrine, or false appearances of happiness in matter of conversation; for these a natural man may avoid in many cases, without that addition of Grace which is offered to us as Christians. That comparison of other creatures to man, which is intimated in Job, is intended but of the natural man. There speaking of Behemoth, that is, of the greatest of creatures, he says in our Translation that He is the chief of the ways of God: S. Hierom hath it, Principium; 
Job 40.19.  and others before him, Initium viarum Dei; that when God went the progress over the world in the creation thereof, he did but begin, he did but set out at Behemoth, at the best of all such creatures; Herald All they were but Initium viarum, The beginning of the ways of God: but, Finis viarum, the end of his journey, and the eve, the vespers of his Sabbath, was the making of man, even of the natural man. Behemoth and the other creatures were vestigia, says the School. In them we may see where God hath gone; for all being is from God and so every thing that hath a being, hath filiationem vestigii, a testimony of Gods having passed that way, and called in there: but man hath filiationem imaginis, an expression of his image; and doth the office of an image or picture, to bring him whom it represents, the more lively to our memories. God's abridgement of the whole world was man; reabridge man into his least volume, in pura naturalia, as he is but mere man, and so he hath the image of God in his soul.  
He hath it as God is considered in his unity; for as God is, the soul of man is, indivisibly, impartibly, one entire. And he hath it also as God is notified to us in a Trinity: for as there are three persons in the essence of God; so are there three faculties in the soul of man. The attributes, and some kind of speculation of the persons in the Trinity, are, power to the Father, wisdom to the Son, and goodness to the holy Ghost. And the three faculties of the soul have the images of these three: the Understanding is the image of the Father, that is, Power; for no man exercises power, no man can govern well, without understanding the natures & dispositions of them whom he governs: and therefore in this consists the power which man hath over the creature, that man understands the nature of every creature; for so Adam did when he named every creature according to the nature thereof: and by this advantage of our understanding them, and comprehending them, we master them; and so, Obliviscuntur quod natae sunt, says S. Ambrose: the lion, the bear, the elephant, have forgot what they were born to; Induuntur quod jubentur, they invest and put on such a disposition and such a nature as we enjoin them & appoint them: Serviunt ut famuli (as that Father pursues it elegantly) and, Verberantur ut timidi; they wait upon us as servants, who, if they understood us, as well as we understand them, might be our masters; and they receive correction from us, as though they were afraid of us, when, if they understood us, they would know that we were not able to stand in the teeth of the lion, the horn of the bull, in the heels of the horse; and, Adjuvantur ut infirmi, they sergeant a weakness, that they might be beholding to us for help; and they are content to thank us, if we afford them rest, or any food, who, if they understood us as well as we do them, might tear our meat out of our throats; nay, tear out our throats for their meat. So then in this first natural faculty of the soul, the Understanding, stands the image of the first person, the Father, Power.  
And in the second faculty, which is the Will, is the image, the attribute of the second person, the Son, which is Wisdom: for wisdom is not so much in knowing, in understanding, as in electing, in choosing, in assenting. No man needs go out of himself, nor beyond his own legend, and the history of his own actions for examples of that, That many times we know better, and choose ill ways. Wisdom is in choosing or assenting.  
And then in the third faculty of the soul, the Memory, is the image of the third person, the holy Ghost, that is, Goodness. For to remember, to recollect our former understanding, and our former assenting, so fare as to do them, to crown them with action, that is true goodness. The office that Christ assigns to the holy Ghost, and the goodness which he promiseth in his behalf is this, that he shall bring former things to our remembrance. 
John 14.26.  The wise man places all goodness in this faculty, the Memory: properly nothing can fall into the Memory, but that which is past; and yet he says, Whatsoever thou takest in hand, 
Ecclus 7.36.  remember the end, and thou shalt never do amiss. The end cannot be yet come, and yet we are bid to remember that. Visus per omnes sensus recurrit, says S. Augustine: as all senses are called sight in the Scriptures (for there is Gustate Dominum, and Audite, and Palpate; Taste the Lord, and Hear the Lord, and Feel the Lord; and still the Videte is added, Taste and see the Lord) so all goodness is in remembering; all goodness (which is the image of the holy Ghost) is in bringing our understanding and our assenting into action. Certainly (beloved) if a man were like the King but in countenance, and in proportion, he himself would think somewhat better of himself, and others would be the less apt to put scorns or injuries upon him, then if he had a vulgar and coarse aspect: with those who have the image of the King's power (the Magistrate) the image of his wisdom (the Council) the image of his goodness (the Clergy) it should be so too; there is a respect due to the image of the King in all that have it. Now in all these respects, man, the mere natural man, hath the image of the King of kings; and therefore respect that image in thyself, and exalt thy natural faculties, emulate those men, and be ashamed to be outgone by those men who had no light but nature. Make thine understanding, and thy will, and thy memory (though but natural faculties) serviceable to thy God, and auxiliary & subsidiary for thy salvation: for though they be not naturally instruments of grace, yet naturally they are susceptible of grace, and have so much in their nature, as that by grace they may be made instruments of grace, which no faculty in any creature but man can be. And do not think that because a natural man cannot do all, he hath nothing to do for himself.  
This then is the image of God in man, the first way, in Nature; and most literally this is the intention of the text. Man was this image thus; and the room furnished with this image, was paradise: but there is a better room than that paradise for the second image (the image of God in man by Grace) that is, the Christian Church: for though for the most part this text be understood de naturalibus, of our natural faculties; yet Origen, and not only such allegorical expositors, but Saint Basil, and Nissen, and Ambrose, and others, who are literal enough, assign this image of God to consist in the gifts of God's grace, exhibited to us here in the Church. A Christian then in that second capacity, as a Christian, and not only as a Man, hath this image of God, of God first considered entirely. And those expressions of this impression, those representations of this image of God in a Christian by grace, which the Apostles have exhibited to us, that we are the sons of God, the seed of God, the offspring of God, and partakers of the divine nature, (which are high and glorious exaltations) are enlarged and exalted by Damascen to a further height, when he says, Sicut Dens homo, ità ego Deus; As God is man, so I am God, says Damascen; I, taking in the whole mankind (for so Damascen takes it out of Nazianzen; and he says, Sicut verbum caro, ità caro verbum; As God was made man, man may become God) but especially I; I, as I am wrought upon by grace in Christ Jesus. So a Christian is made the image of God entirely. To which expression S. Cyril also comes near, when he calls a Christian Deiformem hominem, man in the form of God; which is a mysterious and a blessed metamorphosis and transfiguration: that, whereas it was the greatest trespass of the greatest trespasser in the world, 
Isa. 14.14.  the devil, to say, Similis ero Altissimis, I will be like the Highest; it would be as great a trespass in me not to be like the Highest, not to conform myself to God, by the use of his grace in the Christian Church. And whereas the humiliation of my Saviour is in all things to be imitated by me, yet herein I am bound to departed from his humiliation; 
Phil. 2.6, 7.  that, whereas he being in the form of God, took the form of a servant; I, being in the form of a servant, may (nay, must) take upon me the form of God, in being Deiformis homo, a man made in Christ, the image of God. So have I the image of God entirely in his unity, because I profess that faith which is but one faith, 
Ephes. 4.5.  and under the seal of that Baptism which is but one Baptism. And then, as of this one God, so I have also the image of the several persons of the Trinity, in this capacity as I am a Christian, more than in my natural faculties.  
The attribute of the first person, the Father, is Power: and none but a Christian hath power over those great tyrants of the world, Sin, Satan, Death, and Hell. For thus my power accrues and grows unto me: first, Possum judicare, 
1. Cor. 6.5.  I have a power to judge; a judiciary, a discretive power, a power to discern between a natural accident and a judgement of God, and will never call a judgement an accident; and between an ordinary occasion of conversion, & a temptation of Satan: Possum judicare. And then, Possum resistere, 
Eph. 6.13.  which is another act of power: when I find it to be a temptation, I am able to resist it. And Possum stare (which is another) I am able not only to withstand, but to stand out this battle of temptations to the end. And then, Possum capere; that which Christ proposes for a trial of his disciples, He that is able to receive it, 
Matt. 19.12.  let him receive it: I shall have power to receive the gift of continency against all temptations of that kind. Bring it to the highest act of power, that with which Christ tried his strongest Apostles; Possum bibere calicem, 
Matt. 20.22.  I shall be able to drink of Christ's cup, even to drink his blood, and be the more innocent for that; and to pour out my blood, and be the stronger for that. 
Phil. 4.13.  In Christo omnia possum; there is the fullness of power: In Christ I can do all things; I can want, or I can abound; I can live, or I can die. And yet there is an extension of power beyond all this, in this, Non possum peccare; 
1 John 3.9.  being born of God in Christ, I cannot sinne. This that seems to have a name of impotence, Non possum, I cannot, is the fullest omnipotence of all: I cannot sinne; not sin to death, not sin with a desire to sin, not sin with a delight in sin; but that temptation that overthrows another, I can resist; or that sin which being done, casts another into desperation, I can repent. And so I have the image of the first person, the Father, in Power.  
The image of the second person, whose attribute is Wisdom, I have in this, that wisdom being the knowledge of this world and the next, I embrace nothing in this world, but as it leads me to the next: for thus my wisdom, my knowledge grows: first, 
2. Tim. 1.12.  Scio cui credidi, I know whom I have believed; I have not mislayed my foundation; my foundation is Christ: and then, Scio non moriturum; my foundation cannot sink: 
Rom. 6.9.  I know that Christ being raised from the dead, 
Rom. 8.27.  dies no more: again, Scio quod desideret spiritus; I know what my spirit, enlightened by the Spirit of God, desires: I am not transported with illusions and singularities of private spirits. And as in the attribute of Power we found an Omnipotence in a Christian; so in this there is an Omniscience. 
1. Cor. 8.1.  Scimus quia omnem scientiam habemus; there is all together: We know that we have all knowledge; for all S. Paul's universal knowledge was but this, 
1. Cor. 2.2.  Jesum crucisixum: I determined not to know any thing, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And then the way by which he would proceed and take degrees in this wisdom, 
1. Cor. 1.21.  was, stultitia praedicandi, the way that God had ordained: When the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. These than are the steps of Christian wisdom: my foundation is Christ; of Christ I inquire no more but fundamental doctrines, him crucified; and this I apply to myself by his ordinance of preaching. And in this wisdom I have the image of the second person.  
And then of the third also in this, that, his attribute being goodness, I, as a true Christian, call nothing good, that conduceth not to the glory of God in Christ Jesus; nor any thing ill, that draws me not from him. Thus I have an express image of his goodness, that Omnia cooperantur in bonum; 
Rom. 8.28.  all things work together for my good, if I love God. I shall thank my fever, bless my poverty, praise my oppressor; nay, thank, and bless, and praise even some sin of mine, which by the consequences of that sin, which may be shame, or loss, or weakness, may bring me to a happy sense of all my former sins; and shall find it to have been a good fever, a good poverty, a good oppression, yea, a good sin. Vertit in bonum, says Joseph to his brethren; You thought evil, 
Gen. 50.20  but God meant it unto good: and I shall have the benefit of my sin, according to his transmutation; that is, though I meant ill in that sin, I shall have the good that God meant in it. 
Amos 3.6.  There is no evil in the city, but the Lord doth it: but if the Lord do it, it cannot be evil to me. I believe that I shall see bona Dei, the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living; 
Psal. 27.13.  that is, in heaven: but David speaks also of signum in bonum; Show me a token of good: and God will show me a present token of future good, an inward infallibility, that this very calamity shall be beneficial and advantageous unto me: and so as in nature I have the image of God in my whole soul, and of all the three persons in the three faculties thereof; the understanding, the will, and the memory: so in grace, in the Christian Church, I have the same images of the power of the Father, of the wisdom of the Son, of the goodness of the holy Ghost, in my Christian profession. And all this we shall have in a better place than paradise (where we considered it in nature) and a better place than the Church, as it is militant (where we considered it in grace) that is, in the kingdom of heaven (where we considered this image in glory) which is our last word.  
There we shall have this image of God in perfection: for if Origen could lodge such a conceit, that in heaven at last all things should ebb back into God, as all things flowed from him at first; and so there should be no other essence but God, all should be God, even the devil himself: how much more may we conceive an unexpressible association (that is too fare off) an assimilation (that is not near enough) an identification (the School would venture to say so) with God in that state of glory! Whereas the sun by shining upon the moon, makes the moon a planet, a star as well as itself, which otherwise would be but the thickest and darkest part of that sphere: so those beams of glory which shall issue from my God, and fall upon me, shall make me (otherwise a clod of earth, and worse, a dark soul, a spirit of darkness) an angel of light, a star of glory, a something that I cannot name now, not imagine now, nor to morrow, nor next year; but even in that particular, I shall be like God: that as he that asked a day to give a definition of God, the next day asked a week, and then a month, and then a year; so undeterminable would my imaginations be, if I should go about to think now, what I shall be there: I shall be so like God, as that the devil himself shall not know me from God, so fare as to find any more place to fasten a temptation upon me, then upon God; nor to conceive any more hope of my falling from that kingdom, then of Gods being driven out of it: for though I shall not be immortal as God, yet I shall be as immortal as God. And there is my image of God, of God considered all together, and in his unity in the state of grace.  
I shall have also then the image of all the three persons of the Trinity. Power is the Fathers; and a greater power than he exercises here, I shall have there: here he overcomes enemies, but yet here he hath enemies; there, there are none: here they cannot prevail; there they shall not be. So Wisdom is the image of the Son; and there I shall have better wisdom: the spiritual wisdom itself is here: for here our best wisdom is, but to go towards our end; there it is to rest in our end: here it is to seek to be glorified by God; there it is that God may be everlastingly glorified by me. The image of the holy Ghost is Goodness. Here our goodness is mixed with some ill; faith mixed with scruples, & good works mixed with a love of praise, and hope of better mixed with fear of worse: there I shall have sincere goodness, goodness impermixt, intemerate and indeterminate goodness; so good a place, as no ill accident shall annoy it; so good company as no impertinent, no importune person shall disorder it; so full a goodness, as no evil of sin, no evil of punishment for former sins can enter; so good a God, as shall no more keep us in fear of his anger, nor in need of his mercy; but shall fill us first, and establish us in that fullness in the same instant, and give us a satiety that we can wish no more, and an infallibility that we can lose none of that, and both at once. Whereas the Cabalists express our nearness to God in that state, in that note, that the name of man and the name of God, ADAM and JEHOVAH, in their numeral letters are equal: so I would have leave to express that inexpressible state, so fare as to say, that if there can be other worlds imagined besides this that is under our moon, and if there could be other Gods imagined of those worlds, besides this God to whose image we are made, in Nature, in Grace, in Glory; I had rather be one of these Saints in this heaven, than one of those Gods in those other worlds. I shall be like the angels in a glorified soul, and the angels shall not be like me in a glorified body.  
The holy nobleness and religious ambition that I would imprint in you for attaining of this glory, makes me dismiss you with this note, for the fear of missing that glory; that, as we have taken just occasion to magnify the goodness of God towards us, in that he speaks plurally, Faciamus, Let Us, all Us do this; & so pours out the blessings of the whole Trinity upon us, in this image of himself, in every person of the three, and in all these three ways which we have considered: so when the anger of God is justly kindled against us, God collects himself, summons himself, assembles himself, musters himself, and threatens plurally too: for of those four places in Scripture, in which only (as we noted before) God speaks of himself in a royal plural, God speaks in anger, and in a preparation to destruction, in one of those four entirely, as entirely he speaks of mercy but in one of them, in this text; here he says merely out of mercy, Faciamus, Let Us, Us, all Us, make man: and in the same plurality, the same universality, he says after, Descendamus & confundamus, 
Gen. 11.7.  Let Us, Us, all Us, go down to them and confound them, as merely out of indignation and anger, as here out of mercy. And in the other two places, where God speaks plurally, he speaks not merely in mercy, nor merely in justice in neither; but in both he mingles both: so that God carries himself so equally herein, as that no soul, no Church, no State may any more promise itself patience in God if it provoke him, then suspect anger in God if we conform ourselves to him. For from them that set themselves against him, God shall withdraw his image in all the persons and all the attributes: the Father shall withdraw his power, and we shall be enfeebled in our forces; the Son his wisdom, and we shall be enfatuated in our counsels; the holy Ghost his goodness, and we shall be corrupted in our manners, and corrupted in our religion, and be a prey to temporal and spiritual enemies, and change the image of God into the image of the beast. And as God loves nothing more than the image of himself in his Son, and then the image of his Son Christ Jesus in us; so he hates nothing more than the image of Antichrist in them in whom he had imprinted his Son's image; that is, declinations towards Antichrist, or concurrences with Antichrist, in them who were born, and baptised, and catechised, & blessed in the profession of his truth.  
That God, who hath hitherto delivered us from all cause or colour of jealousies or suspicions thereof in them whom he hath placed over us, so conform us to his image in a holy life, that sins continued and multiplied by us against him, do not so provoke him against us, that those two great helps, the assiduity of preaching, and the personal and exemplary piety & constancy in our Princes, be not by our sins made unprofitable unto us: for that is the height of God's malediction upon a nation, when the assiduity of preaching and the example of a religious Prince doth them no good, but aggravates their fault.  
FINIS.   

A SERMON Upon the nineteen verse of the two Chapter of HOSEA.  
Bianca Dr. DONNE DEAN OF PAUL'S.  
¶ Printed by the Printers to the University of CAMBRIDGE. MDCXXXIIII.   
Hosea 2.19. 
And I will marry thee unto me for ever.  
THe word which is the hinge upon which all this text turns, is Erash: and Erash signifies not only a betrothing, as our later translation hath it, but a marrying; and so it is used by David, Deliver me my wife Michael, 
2. Sam. 3.14  whom I married: and so our former translation had it, and so we accept it, and so shall handle it. I will marry thee unto me for ever.  
The first marriage that was made, God made; and he made it in Paradise: and of that marriage, I have had the like occasion as this, to speak before, in the presence of many honourable persons in this company. The last marriage which shall be made, God shall make too, and in Paradise too, in the kingdom of heaven: and at that marriage, I hope in him that shall make it, to meet, not some, but all this company. The marriage in this text hath relation to both those marriages. It is itself the spiritual and mystical marriage of Christ Jesus to the Church, and to every marriageable soul in the Church: and it hath a retrospect, it looks back to the first marriage; for to that the first word carries us, because from thence God takes his metaphor and comparison, Sponsabo, I will marry: and then it hath a prospect to the last marriage; for to that we are carried in the last word, In aeternum, I will marry thee unto me for ever. Be pleased therefore to give me leave in this exercise, to shift the Scene thrice, and to present to your religious considerations three objects, three subjects: first, a secular marriage, in Paradise; secondly, a spiritual marriage, in the Church; and thirdly, an eternal marriage, in Heaven: And in each of these three, we shall present three circumstances; first, the persons, Me and Tibi, I will marry thee; and then the action, Sponsabo, I will marry thee; and lastly, the term, In aeternum, I will marry thee to me for ever.  
In the first acceptation then, 
1 Part.  in the first, the secular marriage in Paradise, the persons were Adam and Eve: ever since, they are He and She, man and woman: at first, by reason of necessity, without any such limitation as now; and now without any other limitations, than such as are expressed in the law of God. As the Apostles say, in the first general Council, 
Act. 15.28.  We lay nothing upon you but things necessary; so we call nothing necessary, but that which is commanded by God. If in heaven I may have the place of a man that hath performed the commandments of God, I will not change with him, that thinks he hath done more than the commandments of God enjoined him. The rule of marriage for degrees and distance in blood, is the law of God; but for conditions of men, there is no rule at all given. When God had made Adam and Eve in Paradise, though there were four rivers in Paradise, God did not place Adam in a Monastery on one side, and Eve in a Nunnery on the other, and so a river between them. They that build walls and cloisters to frustrate God's institution of marriage, advance the doctrine of devils, in forbidding of marriage. The devil hath advantages enough against us, in bringing men and women together: it was a strange and superdevilish invention, to give him a new advantage against us, by keeping men and women asunder, by forbidding marriage. Between the heresy of the Nicolaitans, that induced a community of women (any might take any) and the heresy of the Tatians, that forbade all (none might take any) was a fair latitude. Between the opinion of the Manichaean heretics, that thought women to be made by the devil; and the Colliridian heretics, that sacrificed to a woman, as to God, there is a fair distance. Between the denying of them souls, which S. Ambrose is charged to have done; and giving them such souls, as that they may be priests, as the Peputian heretics did, is a fair way for a moderate man to walk in. To make them gods, is ungodly; and to make them devils, is devilish: to make them mistresses, is unmanly; and to make them servants, is unnoble: to make them, as God made them, wives, is godly, and manly too. When in the Roman church they dissolve marriages in natural kindred, in degrees where God forbids it not; when they dissolve marriage upon spiritual kindred, because my grandfather christened that woman's father; when they dissolve marriage upon legal kindred, because my grandfather adopted that woman's father, they separate those whom God hath joined so fare, as to give them leave to join in lawful marriage. When men have made vows to abstain from marriage, I would they would be content to try a little longer than they do, whether they could keep that vow or no: And when men have consecrated themselves to the service of God in his Church, I would they would be content to try a little further than they do, whether they could abstain or no: But to dissolve marriages made after such a vow, or after orders, is still to separate those whom God hath not separated. The persons are He and She, man and woman: they must be so much; he must be a man, she must be a woman: and they must be no more; not a brother and a sister, not an uncle and a niece. Adduxit ad eum, was the case between Adam & Eve; God brought them together: God will not bring me a precontracted person; he will not have me defraud another: God will not bring me a misbelieving, a superstitious person; he will not have me drawn from himself: But let them be persons that God hath made, man and woman; and persons that God hath brought together, that is, not put asunder by any law of his; and all such are persons capable of this first, this secular marriage.  
In which our second consideration is the action, Sponsabo; where the active is a kind of passive: I will marry thee, is, I will be married to thee; for we marry not ourselves. They are somewhat hard driven in the Roman church, when, making marriage a sacrament, and being pressed by us with this question, If it be a sacrament, who administers it? who is the Priest? they are fain to answer, The Bridegroom and the Bride, he and she are the Priest in that sacrament. As marriage is a civil contract, it must be done so in public, as that it may have the testimony of men: as marriage is a religious contract, it must be so done, as that it may have the benediction of the Priest. In a marriage without testimony of men, they cannot claim any benefit by the Law; in a marriage without the benediction of the Priest, they cannot claim any benefit of the Church: for how matrimonially soever, such persons as have married themselves, may pretend to love and live together; yet all that love and all that life is but a regulated adultery, it is not marriage.  
Now this Institution of marriage had 3 objects: First, In ustionem, it was given for a remedy against burning; and then, In prolem, for propagation, for children; and lastly, In adjutorium, for mutual help. As we consider it the first way, In ustionem, every heating is not a burning; every natural concupiscence does not require a marriage: nay, every flaming is not a burning; though a man continue under the flame of carnal temptation, as long as S. Paul did, yet it needs not come presently to a Sponsabo, I will marry. God gave S. Paul other physic, Gratia mea sufficit, grace to stand under that temptation: and S. Paul gave himself other physic, Contundo corpus, convenient disciplines to tame his body. These will keep a man from burning; for, Vri, est desideriis vinci; desideria pati, illustris est & perfecti: To be overcome by our concupiscencies, that is to burn; but to quench that fire by religious ways, that is a noble, that is a perfect work. When God, at the first institution of marriage, had this first use of marriage in his contemplation, that it should be a remedy against burning, God gave man the remedy, before he had the disease: for marriage was instituted in the state of innocence, when there was no inordinateness in the affections of man, and so no burning. But as God created Rheubarb in the world, whose quality is to purge choler, before there was any choler to purge: so God, according to his abundant forwardness to do us good, created a remedy before the disease, which he foresaw coming, was come upon us. Let him then, that takes his wife in this first and lowest sense, In medicinam, but as his physic, yet make her his cordial physic, take her to his heart, and fill his heart with her; let her dwell there, and dwell there alone: and so they will be mutual antidotes and preservatives to one another, against all foreign temptations. And with this blessing bless thou, O Lord, these whom thou hast brought hither for this blessing: make all the days of their life, like this day unto them: and as thy mercies are new every morning, make them so to one another: and if they may not die together, sustain thou the survivor of them in that sad hour, with this comfort, that he that died for them both, will bring them together again in his everlastingness.  
The second use of marriage was, In prolificationem, For children: And therefore (as S. Augustine puts the case) to contract before, that they will have no children, makes it no marriage, but an adultery. To deny themselves to one another, is as much against marriage, as to give themselves to another. To hinder that by physic, or any other practice; nay, to hinder that so fare, as by a deliberate wish or prayer against children, consists not well with this second use of marriage. And yet in this second use we do not so much consider generation, as regeneration; not so much procreation, as education; nor propagation, as transplantation of children: for this world might be filled full enough of children, though there were no marriage; but heaven could not be filled, nor the places of the fallen angels supplied, without that care of children's religious education, which from parents in lawful marriage they are likeliest to receive. How infinite and how miserable a circle of sin do we make, if, as we sinned in our parents loins before we were born, so we sin in our children's actions when we are dead, by having given them either example or liberty of sinning! We have a fearful commination from God, upon a good man, upon Eli, for his not restraining the licentiousness of his sons: 
1. Sam. 3.11  I will do a thing in Israel, says God there, at which both the ears of every one that heareth it shall tingle: and it was executed; Eli fell down, 
1. Sam. 4.18  and broke his neck. We have also a promise of consolation to women, for children: She shall be saved in child-bearing, 
1. Tim. 2.15  says the Apostle: but, as chrysostom and others of the ancients observe and interpret that place (which interpretation arises out of the very letter) it is, Si permanserint; not, If she, but, If they, if the children continue in faith, and charity, and holiness, with sobriety. The salvation of the parents hath so much relation to the children's goodness, as that, if they be ill by the parent's example or indulgence, the parents are as guilty as the children. Art thou afraid thy child should be stung with a snake, and wilt thou let him play with the old serpent, in opening himself to all temptations? Art thou afraid to let him walk in an ill air, and art thou content to let him stand in that pestilent air, that is made of nothing but oaths and execrations of blasphemous mouths round about him? It is S. Chrysostom's complaint, Perditionem magno pretio emunt, salutem nec dono accipere volunt: we pay dear for our children's damnation, by paying at first for all their childish vanities, and then for their sinful insolences at any rate; and we might have them saved, and ourselves to the bargain (which were a frugal way, and a debt well hedged in) for much less than ours and their damnation stands us in. If you have a desire, says that blessed Father, to leave them certainly rich, Deum iis relinque debitorem; Do some such thing for God's service, as you may leave God in their debt. He cannot break; his estate is inexhaustible: He will not break promise, nor break day; He will show mercy unto thousands, in them that love him, and keep his commandments. And here also may another shower of his benedictions fall upon them, whom he hath prepared and presented here; 
Ps. 128.3.  Let the wife be as a fruitful vine, and their children like olive-plants. To thy glory, let the parents express the love of parents, and the children, to thy glory, the obedience of children, till they both lose that secular name of parents and children, and meet all alike, in one new name, all saints in thy kingdom, and fellow-servants there.  
The third and last use in this institution of secular marriage, was, In adjutorium, For mutual help. There is no state, no man in any state, that needs not the help of others. Subjects need Kings; and if Kings do not need their subjects, they need alliances abroad, and they need counsel at home. Even in paradise, where the earth produced all things for life, without labour, and the beasts submitted themselves to man, so that he had no outward enemy; and in the state of innocence in paradise, where, in man, all the affections submitted themselves to reason, so that he had no inward enemy; yet God, in this abundant paradise, and in this secure innocence of paradise, even in the survey of his own works, saw, that though all that he had made, was good, yet he had not made all good; he found thus much defect in his own work, that man lacked an helper. Every body needs the help of others; and every good body does give some kind of help to others. Even into the ark itself, where God blessed them all with a powerful and an immediate protection, God admitted only such, as were fitted to help one another, couples. In the ark, which was the type of our best condition in this life, there was not a single person. Christ said once one thief at the last gasp, to show that there may be late repentances: but in the ark he saved none but married persons, to show, that he eases himself in making them helpers to one another. And therefore when we come to the Posui Deum adjutorium meum, to rely upon God primarily for our helper; God comes to the Faciam tibi adjutorium, I will make thee a help like thyself: not always like in complexion, nor like in years, nor like in fortune, nor like in birth; but like in mind, like in disposition, like in the love of God and of one another, or else there is no helper. It was no kind of help, that David's wife gave him, when she spoke by way of counsel, but in truth in scorn and derision, to draw him from a religious act, as the dancing before the ark at that time was. It is no help, for any respect, to slacken the husband in his religion. It was but a poor help that Nabals' wife was fain to give him, by telling David, Alas, my husband is but a fool, like his name; and what will you look for at a fools hand? It is the worst help of all, to raise a husband by dejecting herself; to help her husband forward in this world, by forfeiting sinfully and dishonourably her own interest in the next. The husband is the helper in the nature of a foundation, to sustain and uphold all; the wife in the nature of the roof, to cover imperfections and weaknesses: the husband in the nature of the head, from whence all the sinews flow; the wife in the nature of the hands, into which those sinews flow, and enable them to do their offices: the husband helps as legs to her; she moves by his motion: the wife helps as a staff to him; he moves the better by her assistance. And let this mutual help be a part of our present benediction too: In all the ways of fortune, let his industry help her; and in all the crosses of fortune, let her patience help him; and in all emergent occasions and dangers, spiritual or temporal, O God, make speed to save them; O Lord, make haste to help them.  
We have spoken of the persons, Man and Woman, Him and Her; and of the action, first, as it is physic, but cordial physic; and then for children, but children to be made the children of God; and lastly for help, but true help, and mutual help: there remains yet in this secular marriage, the term how long, for ever; I will marry thee for ever. Now though there be properly no eternity in this secular marriage, nor in any thing in this world, (for eternity is only that which never had beginning, nor ever shall have end) yet we may consider a kind of eternity, a kind of circle, without beginning, without end, even in this secular marriage: for first, marriage should have no beginning before marriage; no half marriages, no lending away of the mind in conditional precontracts before, no lending away of the body in unchaste wantonness before. The body is the temple of the holy Ghost; and when two bodies by marriage are to be made one temple, the wife is not as the chancel, reserved and shut up, and the man as the walks below, indifferent and at liberty for every passenger. God in his temple looks for first-fruits from both; that so, on both sides, marriage should have such a degree of eternity, as to have had no beginning of marriage before marriage. It should have this degree of eternity too, this quality of a circle, to have no interruption, no breaking in the way, by unjust suspicions and jealousies. Where there is spiritus immunditiei, as S. Paul calls it, A spirit of uncleanness, there will necessarily be spiritus zelotypiae, as Moses calls it, A spirit of jealousy. But to raise the devil in the power of the devil, to call up one spirit by another spirit, by the spirit of jealousy and suspicion, to induce the spirit of uncleanness where it was not, if a man conjure up a devil so, God knows who shall conjure it down again. As jealousy is a care, and not a suspicion, God is not ashamed to protest of himself, that he is a jealous God. God commands that no idolatry be committed, Thou shalt not bow down to a graven image; 
Exod. 20.5  and before he accuses any man to have bowed down to a graven image, before any idolatry was committed, he tells them that he is a jealous God; God is jealous before there be any harm done. And God presents it as a curse, when he says, My jealousy shall departed from thee, 
Eze. 16.42.  and I will be quiet, and no more angry; that is, I will leave thee to thyself, and take no more care of thee. Jealousy that implies care, and honour, and counsel, and tenderness, is rooted in God; for God is a jealous God, and his servants are jealous servants, as S. Paul professes of himself, 
2. Cor. 11.2  I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy. But jealousy that implies diffidence, and suspicion, and accusation, is rooted in the devil; for he is The accuser of the brethren.  
So then this secular marriage should be In aeternum, eternal, for ever, as to have no beginning before, and so too, as to have no jealous interruption by the way; for it is so eternal, as that it can have no end in this life. Those whom God hath joined, no man, no devil can separate so, as that it shall not remain a marriage so fare, as that, if those separated persons will live together again, yet they shall not be new married; so fare, certainly, the band of marriage continues still. The devil makes no marriages: he may have a hand in drawing conveyances; in the temporal conditions there may be practice; but the marriage is made by God in heaven. The devil can break no marriages neither, though he can by sin break off all the good uses, and take away all the comforts of marriage. I pronounce not now, whether adultery dissolve marriage or no: It is S. Augustine's wisdom to say, When the Scripture is silent, let me be silent too: and I may go lower than he, and say, Where the Church is silent, let me be silent too; and our Church is so fare silent in this, as that it hath not said, that adultery dissolves marriage. Perchance than it is not the death of marriage; but surely it is a deadly wound. We have authors in the Roman church, that think Fornicationem non vagam, that such an incontinent life, as is limited to one certain person, is no deadly sin: but there are none, even amongst them, that diminish the crime of adultery. Habere quasi non haberes, is Christ's counsel; to have a wife, as though thou hadst none, that is, for continency and temperance, and forbearance, and abstinence upon some occasions. But, Non habere quasi haberes, is not so: not to have a wife, and yet have her; to have her that is another's, this is the devil's counsel. Of that salutation of the Angel to the blessed Virgin Mary, Blessed art thou amongst women, we may make ever this interpretation, not only that she was blessed amongst women, that is, above women; but that she was Benedicta, Blessed amongst women, that all women blessed her, that no woman had occasion to curse her. And this is the eternity of this secular marriage, as fare as this world admits any eternity, that it should have no beginning before, no interruption of jealousy in the way, no such approach towards dissolution, as that incontinency, in all opinions, and in all Churches, is agreed to be. And here also, without any scruple of fear, or of suspicion of the contrary, there is place for this benediction upon this couple: Build, O Lord, upon thine own foundations, in these two, and establish thy former graces with future; that no person ever complain of either of them, nor either of them of one another; and so he and she are married in aeternum, for ever.  
We are come now, 
TWO Part.  in our order proposed at first, to our second part; for all is said that I intended of the secular marriage. And of this second, the spiritual marriage, much needs not to be said: there is another priest that contracts that, another preacher that celebrates that, the Spirit of God, to our spirit. And for the third marriage, the eternal marriage, it is a boldness to offer to say any thing of a thing so inexpressible as the joys of heaven; it is a diminution of them, to go about to heighten them; it is a shadowing of them, to go about to lay any colours or lights upon on them. But yet your patience may perchance last to a word of each of these three circumstances, the persons, the action, the term, both in this spiritual and in the eternal marriage.  
First then, as in the former part, the secular marriage, for the persons there, we considered first Adam and Eve; and after, every man and woman, and this couple in particular: so in this spiritual marriage, we consider first Christ and his Church, for the persons; but more particularly, Christ and my soul. And can these persons meet? In such a distance, and in such a disparagement, can persons meet? The Son of God, and the son of man? When I consider Christ to be German Jehovae, the bud and blossom, the fruit & offspring of Jehovah, Jehovah himself; and myself, before he took me in hand, to be, not a potter's vessel of earth, but that earth of which the potter might make a vessel if he would, and break it if he would, when he had made it: when I consider Christ to have been from before all beginnings, and to be still the image of the Father, the same stamp upon the same metal; and myself a piece of rusty copper, in which those lines of the image of God, which were imprinted in me, in my creation, are defaced, and worn, and washed, and burnt, and ground away by my many, and many, and many sins: when I consider Christ in his circle, in glory with his Father, before he came into this world, establishing a glorious Church when he was in this world, and glorifying that Church, with that glory which himself had before, when he went out of this world; and then consider myself in my circle, I came into this world washed in mine own tears, and either out of compunction for myself, or compassion for others, I pass through this world, as through a valley of tears, where tears settle and swell; and when I pass out of this world, I have their eyes, whose hands close mine, full of tears too: Can these persons, this image of God, this God himself, this glorious God, and this vessel of earth, this earth itself, this inglorious worm of the earth, meet without disparagement?  
They do meet, and make a marriage: because I am not a body only, but a body and soul; there is a marriage, and Christ marries me. 
Deut. 21.12  As by the Law a man might marry a captive woman in the wars, if he shaved her head, and pared her nails, and changed her clothes: so my Saviour having fought for my soul, fought to blood, to death, to the death of the cross for her; having studied my soul so much, as to write all those epistles, which are in the New Testament, to my soul; having presented my soul with his own picture, that I can see his face in all his temporal blessings; having shaved her head, in abating her pride; and pared her nails, in contracting her greedy desires; and changed her clothes, not to fashion herself after this world; my soul being thus fitted by himself, Christ Jesus hath married my soul; married her to all the three intendments mentioned in the secular marriage: First, In ustionem, Against burning; that, whether I burn myself in the fire of temptation, by exposing myself to occasions of temptation; or be reserved to be burnt by others in the fires of persecution and martyrdom; whether the fires of ambition, or envy, or lust, or the everlasting fires of hell offer at me, in an apprehension of the judgements of God; yet, as the Spirit of God shall wipe all tears from mine eyes, so the tears of Christ Jesus shall extinguish all fires in my heart: and so it is a marriage, In ustionem, a remedy against burning. It is so too, In prolificationem, For children. First, Vae soli, Woe unto that single soul that is not married to Christ, that is not come into the way of having issue by him, that is not incorporated in the Christian Church, and in the true Church; but is yet either in the wilderness of idolatry amongst the Gentiles, or in the labyrinth of superstition amongst the Papists. Vae soli, Woe unto that single man, that is not married to Christ in the sacraments of the Church; and, Vae sterili, Woe unto them that are barren after this spiritual marriage: for that is a great curse in the Prophet Jeremy, 
Jer. 22.30.  Scribe virum istum sterilem, Writ this man childless; that implied all calamities upon him. And assoon as Christ had laid that curse upon the figtree, 
Matt. 21.19  Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever, presently the whole tree withered: if no fruit, no leaves neither, nor body left. To be incorporated in the body of Christ Jesus, and bring forth no fruits worthy of that profession, is a woeful state too. Vae soli: First, Woe unto the Gentiles not married to Christ: and, Vae sterili, Woe unto inconsiderate Christians, that think not upon their calling, that conceive not by Christ: but there is a Vae pregnanti too, 
Matt. 24.19  Woe unto them that are with child, and are never delivered; that have sometimes good conceptions, religious dispositions, holy desires to the advancement of God's truth; but, for some collateral respects, dare not utter them, nor bring them to their birth, to any effect. The purpose of his marriage to us, is, to have children by us: and this is his abundant and his present fecundity, that working now by me in you, in one instant he hath children in me, and grandchildren by me. He hath married me In ustionem, and In prolem; Against burning, and for children: but can he have any use of me, In adjutorium, For a helper? Surely, if I be able to feed him, and cloth him, and harbour him (and Christ would not condemn men at the last day for not doing these, if man could not do them) I am able to help him too. Great persons can help him over sea, convey the name of Christ, where it hath not been preached yet: and they can help him home again, restore his name and his truth, where superstition with violence hath disseized him: and they can help him at home, defend his truth there, against all machinations to displant and dispossess him. Great men can help him thus: and every man can help him to a better place in his own heart, and his own actions, than he hath had there; and to be so helped in me, and helped by me, to have his glory thereby advanced, Christ hath married my soul. And he hath married it In aeternum, For ever, which is the third and last circumstance in this spiritual, as it was in the secular marriage. And here the Aeternum is enlarged. In the secular marriage it was an eternity considered only in this life; but this eternity is not begun in this world, but from all eternity, in the book of life, in God's eternal decree for my election; there Christ was married to my soul. Christ was never in minority, never under years; there was never any time, when he was not as ancient as the Ancient of days, as old as his Father. But when my soul was in a strange minority, infinite millions of millions of generations before my soul was a soul, did Christ marry my soul in his eternal decree: so it was eternal, it had no beginning. Neither doth he interrupt this, by giving me any occasion of jealousy by the way, but loves my soul as though there were no other soul, and would have done and suffered all that he did for me alone, if there had been no name but mine in the book of life. And as he hath married me to him In aeternum, For ever, before all beginning; and In aeternum, For ever, without any interruptions: so I know, that whom he loves, he loves to the end; and that he hath given me, not a presumptuous impossibility, but a modest infallibility, that no sin of mine shall divorce or separate me from him: for that which ends the secular marriage, doth not end the spiritual; not death: for my death doth not take me from that husband; but that husband being by his Father preferred to higher titles and greater glory in another state, I do but go by death, where he is become a King, to have my part in that glory, & in those additions, which he hath received there. And this hath led us to our third and last marriage, our eternal marriage, in the triumphant Church.  
And in this third marriage, 
III Part. Apoc. 19.7, 9  the persons are the Lamb and my Soul. The marriage of the Lamb is come, and blessed are they that are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb, says S. John, speaking of our state in the general resurrection. That Lamb who was brought to the slaughter, 
Isa. 53.7.  and opened not his mouth, and I, who have opened my mouth, and poured out imprecations and curses upon men, and execrations and blasphemies against God, upon every occasion; that Lamb which was slain from the beginning, and I, who was slain by him who was a murderer from the beginning; that Lamb which took away the sins of the world, and I, who brought more sins into the world, than any sacrifice but the blood of this Lamb could take away; this Lamb and I (these are the persons) shall meet and marry, there is the action.  
This is not a clandestine marriage, not the private seal of Christ in the obsignation of his Spirit; and yet such a clandestine marriage is a good marriage: nor is it such a parish-marriage, as when Christ married me to himself at my baptism, in a Church here; and yet that marriage of a Christian soul to Christ in that sacrament, is a blessed marriage: But this is a marriage in that great and glorious congregation, where all my sins shall be laid open to the eyes of all the world; where all the blessed Virgins shall see all my uncleannesses, and all the Martyrs see all my tergiversations, and all the Confessors see all my double dealings in God's cause; where Abraham shall see my faithlesness in God's promises, and Job my impatience in God's corrections, and Lazarus my hardness of heart in distributing Gods blessings to the poor: and those Virgins, and Martyrs, and Confessors, and Abraham, and Job, and Lazarus, and all that congregation, shall look upon the Lamb, and upon me, and upon one another, as though they would all forbid those banes, and say to one another, Will this Lamb have any thing to do with this soul? And yet there and then this Lamb shall marry me, and marry me In aeternum, For ever; which is our last circumstance.  
It is not well done to call it a circumstance; for the eternity is a great part of the essence of that marriage. Consider then how poor and needy a thing all the riches of this world, how flat and tastlesse a thing all the pleasures of this world, how pallid, and faint, and dilute a thing all the honours of this world are, when the very treasure, and joy, and glory of heaven itself were unperfect, if it were not eternal: and my marriage shall be so, In aeternum, For ever. The Angels were not married so; they incurred an irreparable divorce from God, and are separated for ever; and I shall be married to him In aeternum, For ever. The Angels fell in love, when there was no object presented, before any thing was created; when there was nothing but God and themselves, they fell in love with themselves, and neglected God, and so fell In aeternum, For ever. I shall see all the beauty and all the glory of all the Saints of God, and love them all, and know that the Lamb loves them too, without jealousy on his part, or theirs, or mine; and so be married In aeternum, For ever, without interruption, or diminution, 
Reve. 6.12, 13, 14.  or change of affections. I shall see the sun black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon become as blood, and the stars fall, as a figtree casts her untimely figs, and the heavens rolled up together as a scroll: I shall see a divorce between princes and their prerogatives, between nature and all her elements, between the spheres and all their intelligences, between matter itself and all her forms, and my marriage shall be In aeternum, For ever. I shall see an end of faith, nothing to be believed that I do not know; and an end of hope, nothing to be wished that I do not enjoy; but no end of that love, in which I am married to that Lamb for ever: yea, I shall see an end of some of the offices of the Lamb himself: Christ himself shall be no longer a Mediator, an Intercessor, an Advocate, and yet shall continue a Husband to my soul for ever: where I shall be rich enough without jointure, for my Husband cannot die; and wise enough without experience; for no new thing can happen there; and healthy enough without physic, for no sickness can enter; and (which is by much the highest of all) safe enough without grace, for no temptation that needs particular grace can attempt me. There, where the Angels, which cannot die, could not live, this very body, which cannot choose but die, shall live, and live as long as that God of life that made it. Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord, that in thy light we may see light: illustrate our understandings, kindle our affections, pour oil to our zeal, that we may come to the marriage of this Lamb, and that this Lamb may come quickly to this marriage: and in the mean time bless these thy servants, with making this secular marriage a type of the spiritual, and the spiritual an earnest of that eternal, which they and we by thy mercy shall have in that kingdom, which thy Son our Saviour hath purchased with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood. To whom, etc.  
FINIS.